Ya know, I call bullshit. I keep hearing this arguement, and I just haven't felt that yet. I got a 360 and have been playing games like Bioshock, Gears of War, and Blue Dragon. The other day, I played a trial version of Mario Galaxy at Gamestop, which happened to be using my same exact HD Samsung TV, and I was blown away by the graphics. I half expected to be revolted, because of what all these HD freaks are saying, and I could bearily tell the difference. Seriously, having played Metroid Prime 3 and Bioshock back to back, I was kinda dissapointed that HD didn't really make me go "wow" like everyone is saying (not that Bioshock's graphics are anything short of amazing, but so are MP3s). I think the "wow" is more an unconcious reaction to having spent 2x as much on something that isn't really noticably all that superior.
I love my new 360, but if anything, it's re-enforced my support for the Wii as a truely next-gen system. They don't really feel the night-and-day generation different, the way I thought I would. The PS2 is painful to play on now, I'll admit, but the Wii does what it does extremely well, if not better than what the other systems try to do.
Not any more, It comes with CS3 Mac as well. I forgot about that, but then again, Audition isn't a full fledged DAW like Pro Tools, Logic, or DP5, audition is more along the lines of Soundtrack Pro... those are audio editors specifically designed for editing audio to video, not for audio creation or production.
I bought Leopard, and then switched back to Tiger. But not because of any OS issues. The OS seems rock solid to me, the biggest problems I've seen, so far, is lack of support from 3rd parties. The audio side got hit pretty hard because CoreAudio was heavily redone (which isn't being talked about), so things like MOTU Digital Performer and Kontakt, among other things, are not able to function properly under Leopard. Since I rely on those things on a daily basis, I have to switch back to Tiger until they can patch up those issues.
You have to realize that Adobe thrives off of students getting on board with their products. What do students use? Windows and Mac OS (and Linux to a lesser degree). It was even suggested, somewhere, that Adobe would be nothing without piracy, and that the company even knew about it and accepted it. The fact is, Photoshop and InDesign are used from the high school newspaper to National Geographic, if you cut off the insentive to use them at a lower level, before long, you'd have National Geographic moving back to Quark, and going to something like Paint Shop Pro.
No, Adobe shouldn't waste it's time on something like an OS, they should move on to other development areas like audio.
Finally, we have two great design software companies that have really good interface sense, competing with each other. Why would we want them to join? No, the best thing would be to let them (especially Adobe) spread into other design fields. I'd like to see an Adobe audio suite (like logic or Digital Performer)... but what *I*, personally, really want to see is Adobe tackle the seemingly impossible-to-make-good music notation software market, give Finale and Sibelius a well-deserved run for their money. Apple's welcome to join the fun too (they're closer, they've already got Logic). The visual design fields are really getting their all, but the audio design fields are a little behind the ball.
Now, an Apple merger with Nintendo would make perfect sense... but Adobe would just be a catastrophe.
Bad Idea + Throw lots of $$$$ at it = PROFIT! Good Idea + Throw a little bit of $$$$ at it = MORE PROFIT!
Get it? Start with a good idea for a game, for a change. That way, you don't have to sink $50M into lighting effects and marketing, just to get people to play it.
Tetris is one of the best selling games of all time, Lumines did extremely well too. You don't have to throw millions at something just for it to be good. Obviously for more epic gameplay, you need more time and money, but even then, do you think Skies of Arcadia had 1/4 the budget the average Final Fantasy had? Honestly, SoA is a great game, and did well enough that a sequel is in the works.
EAs problem is that "throw $$$$ at bad product" is there answer to everything. Maybe they're starting to realize that, which is why we're seeing so much cynicism from them these days, but until they truly aknowledge that, no amount of bitching is going to help their profit margin.
I would go as far as to say that games don't have a concrete release date until they're sitting on the shelf. I don't know ANY other industry that has so much trouble with release date inflation. Have you ever heard of a band that said, "Hey, we've got a new album coming out in 2 months", only to say "Ooops, sorry, not until 2009". Same goes for Hollywood and literature.
Bottom line, game marketting is incredibly broken. In all other entertainment industries, you would be laughed out of business if you were to tout a release date only to break it... and have less than a 50% success rate. The fucked up thing is that the bigger the more prominant the game developer, the more worse the delay record is. I'm looking at you Square and Nintendo.
Well, the Dock visibility issues are TERRIBLE, I can tell you first hand.
The up side, however, is that there's a simple terminal command (which he posted), that replaces it with a 2D dock that's worlds better than even the previous dock. I can understand an arguement for the new 2D dock design being less attractive, but it sure is a HELL of a lot more visible than the old dock. For one thing, the black arrows have always been terrible. The new 2D dock, however, is a dark transparency but bright white dots highlighting the open programs, which is a hell of a lot better than the tiny black arrows. My only gripe with the new 2D dock, visually, is that the white boarder has rouned corners, which I think doesn't fit with the rest of the interface. But aside from that... over the three dock types, I'll choose the new 2D dock any day.
I'm half expecting that halfway through Leopard's lifecycle, the 2D dock will be the default. Unfortunately, since the 2D one isn't visually as stunning, the best we'll get is the an option to use the 2D dock. I think the 3D one is here to stay... period... apple isn't going to back down on such a visually eye-catching element... even if it's annoying as hell.
Ya know, I think it all comes down to the perception of what the dock is and what application launching is for. Apple wants us to forget about which applications are open and which are not, because they want to toute that applications launching is so fast that it's not really even worth deliniating which applications are actively running, and which are not. The sad truth is, however, that that's not the case. Maybe with simple accessories like Safari and iChat, but not with MOTU Digital Performer, Final Cut, or Adobe After Effects. So that excuse for not clearly dilliniating open apps falls apart. But that's not the only reason why we rely on seeing which apps are open: we like seeing which apps are open because it jogs are memory as to which apps we are currently USING, if we're having to switch back and forth between many of them.
So, blue balls BAD! Absolutely terrible. They, right there, kill the usability of the 3D dock. If they had been nice big black balls, or bright white lights, that would have been great... but blue balls on a light blue background surrounded by icons which are predominantly... blue? Fuck off.
But seriously, I work for an NBC affiliate, and I'm beginning to get emberrassed by my franchise, soon I'll have to tell chicks that I work for CBS, just to get them to sleep with me. Even their best new shows: Chuck and Bionic Woman have horrific acting that brings down the quality, and makes them very dull and unappealing. I badass new idea can only go so far, unless you have the content to back it up, and NBC has proven that they don't have what it takes, most of the time. Heros seems to be the only thing they've got. Just think, for decades they were the undisputed network champ... how the mighty have fallen. And now this shit. Well, a lot of my friends are Heros fans, and they're kinda pissed that they can't get the show on iTunes anymore. Way to go NBC.
Meh, you'd be better off with Tales of the Abyss, Okami, ICO, Shadow of the Colosseus FF12, Dragon Quest VIII, and maybe Wild Arms 4 if you have the time. The rest aren't nearly as good, especially Star Ocean 3, which was an utter dissapointment.
I think ACOS would be highly improbable though, just too long. Quite a few people would love to tackle Metropolis or UaGM, maybe even some sick shit like Dance of Eternity. The fact is, DT has so many tunes that would be PERFECT for Guitar Hero. I mean, John Petrucci is like, THE current raigning guitar God who isn't simply a solo artist.
Somehow I think a couple of punk rockers got on board and basically said, "down with prog". Oh well, you know they'll be some of the first custom builds and downloadables.
Yeah, I don't know why I upset you either. Yes, it seems I was incorrect, and thought that the sales reference refered to any kind of hard media, but why would that piss you off so much?
And good grief, my post wasn't flamebait, it just seemed that I was incorrect... there's a huge difference. I appologize to anyone whose day was ruined by my two sentances.
And here I'm one of the few who usually values Zonk's threads... but I was incorrect about his word usage here.
"Going Gold" refers to sales numbers. When a movie/album/game sells 500,000 copies (in the US), it is said to have "gone gold". Your usage is confusing and wreaks of misinformation.
True, also, keep in mind that the dpad is NOT velocity sensitive, that's what separates it from analog sticks. it's a simple on/off switch, so there's no way in being able to tell how hard or fast you've pressed down a direction. However, I don't see how this would effect mid-air dodging, mid-air dodging wasn't velocity sensitive even in Melee, it was like throwing, as long as you tapped a direction, the action was simply carried out in that direction. Therefor, Wave Dashing is probably possible with the WiiMote, but as I said ealier, the funky controls might make it too difficult to really be usable during battle. It's already at the edge of usability in Melee for all but the very best players.
I use After Effects (and Photoshop) on a daily basis. It's one of the more power-hungry and processor intensive programs out there. Why the FUCK would I want to cripple it 100-fold by moving it to a Java applet, or whatever? This HAS to be a joke, right? What next, Maya, Lightwave, and Cinema 4D Max as Flash applications on a website?
No fucking way. If Adobe does this, I'm jumping over to Motion.
- Only one taunt (Four on GCN/Classic) - no uncharged smashes (C Stick Smashes) - A host of other maneuvers that are just too slow and combersomb to perform on the WiiMote
The bottom line is, while they may have included all the neccessary moves, they haven't done them in a way that will be as accessable as on the GCN/Classic controllers. Lack of C-Stick smashes, for instance, is going to seriously handicap WiiMote-only players. Even smash champions use C-Stick smashes because the timing is just so much more precise.
I don't know of the controller is capable of allowing the performance of more complexly timed maneuvers like Wave Dashing and Dash Dancing. It may be theoretically possible, but probably not during gameplay.
I just started replaying Okami the other day, because I've been working on some computer animation, for a commercial, that was very much inspired by Okami, and I felt the need to go back and play it again. I just got Blue Dragon last night, so I'll probably stop playing Okami for a while, which is good, because I will be the first in line to pick up a Wii version. The only improvements on the game I could see are Widescreen and anti-aliasing, both which the Wii provide nearly out of the box. This just made my day!
From a social standpoint, there's no way to compare. Consider my actions:
I didn't have my credit card with me, so I originally "bought" it for $0, I think downloaded it, after having to wait a while. So that I could more easilly access the album from a place where I had a CD recorder, I uploaded it to my webspace. A few days later, I went back and paid $20, and then didn't download the album (since I already had it).
The fact is, because it's "free" people feel just fine about throwing around willy-nilly. But they still may be donating money for it, but their transactions may not be exactly the norm for an album release, precisely for that reason.
1. You're logged in AC... people don't usually respond to or mod AC posts.
2. Some people may have taken offense (personally, that was my first incination too, so I think they're stupid to have)
3. unfortunately, your response completely nullifies all "funny" in your first post, which I actually did innitially chuckle at.
Thanks
Slashdot Mirror
No, well it's like $402 or something. The Canadians just passed us like, 2 weeks ago.
No, it's $499. Everyone likes to fudge $100 this way or that, but the models are basically $500 and $600
Ya know, I call bullshit. I keep hearing this arguement, and I just haven't felt that yet. I got a 360 and have been playing games like Bioshock, Gears of War, and Blue Dragon. The other day, I played a trial version of Mario Galaxy at Gamestop, which happened to be using my same exact HD Samsung TV, and I was blown away by the graphics. I half expected to be revolted, because of what all these HD freaks are saying, and I could bearily tell the difference. Seriously, having played Metroid Prime 3 and Bioshock back to back, I was kinda dissapointed that HD didn't really make me go "wow" like everyone is saying (not that Bioshock's graphics are anything short of amazing, but so are MP3s). I think the "wow" is more an unconcious reaction to having spent 2x as much on something that isn't really noticably all that superior.
I love my new 360, but if anything, it's re-enforced my support for the Wii as a truely next-gen system. They don't really feel the night-and-day generation different, the way I thought I would. The PS2 is painful to play on now, I'll admit, but the Wii does what it does extremely well, if not better than what the other systems try to do.
I dunno, but I like cake.
Not any more, It comes with CS3 Mac as well. I forgot about that, but then again, Audition isn't a full fledged DAW like Pro Tools, Logic, or DP5, audition is more along the lines of Soundtrack Pro... those are audio editors specifically designed for editing audio to video, not for audio creation or production.
I bought Leopard, and then switched back to Tiger. But not because of any OS issues. The OS seems rock solid to me, the biggest problems I've seen, so far, is lack of support from 3rd parties. The audio side got hit pretty hard because CoreAudio was heavily redone (which isn't being talked about), so things like MOTU Digital Performer and Kontakt, among other things, are not able to function properly under Leopard. Since I rely on those things on a daily basis, I have to switch back to Tiger until they can patch up those issues.
You have to realize that Adobe thrives off of students getting on board with their products. What do students use? Windows and Mac OS (and Linux to a lesser degree). It was even suggested, somewhere, that Adobe would be nothing without piracy, and that the company even knew about it and accepted it. The fact is, Photoshop and InDesign are used from the high school newspaper to National Geographic, if you cut off the insentive to use them at a lower level, before long, you'd have National Geographic moving back to Quark, and going to something like Paint Shop Pro.
No, Adobe shouldn't waste it's time on something like an OS, they should move on to other development areas like audio.
Finally, we have two great design software companies that have really good interface sense, competing with each other. Why would we want them to join? No, the best thing would be to let them (especially Adobe) spread into other design fields. I'd like to see an Adobe audio suite (like logic or Digital Performer)... but what *I*, personally, really want to see is Adobe tackle the seemingly impossible-to-make-good music notation software market, give Finale and Sibelius a well-deserved run for their money. Apple's welcome to join the fun too (they're closer, they've already got Logic). The visual design fields are really getting their all, but the audio design fields are a little behind the ball.
Now, an Apple merger with Nintendo would make perfect sense... but Adobe would just be a catastrophe.
Bad Idea + Throw lots of $$$$ at it = PROFIT!
Good Idea + Throw a little bit of $$$$ at it = MORE PROFIT!
Get it? Start with a good idea for a game, for a change. That way, you don't have to sink $50M into lighting effects and marketing, just to get people to play it.
Tetris is one of the best selling games of all time, Lumines did extremely well too. You don't have to throw millions at something just for it to be good. Obviously for more epic gameplay, you need more time and money, but even then, do you think Skies of Arcadia had 1/4 the budget the average Final Fantasy had? Honestly, SoA is a great game, and did well enough that a sequel is in the works.
EAs problem is that "throw $$$$ at bad product" is there answer to everything. Maybe they're starting to realize that, which is why we're seeing so much cynicism from them these days, but until they truly aknowledge that, no amount of bitching is going to help their profit margin.
I would go as far as to say that games don't have a concrete release date until they're sitting on the shelf. I don't know ANY other industry that has so much trouble with release date inflation. Have you ever heard of a band that said, "Hey, we've got a new album coming out in 2 months", only to say "Ooops, sorry, not until 2009". Same goes for Hollywood and literature.
Bottom line, game marketting is incredibly broken. In all other entertainment industries, you would be laughed out of business if you were to tout a release date only to break it... and have less than a 50% success rate. The fucked up thing is that the bigger the more prominant the game developer, the more worse the delay record is. I'm looking at you Square and Nintendo.
Well, the Dock visibility issues are TERRIBLE, I can tell you first hand.
The up side, however, is that there's a simple terminal command (which he posted), that replaces it with a 2D dock that's worlds better than even the previous dock. I can understand an arguement for the new 2D dock design being less attractive, but it sure is a HELL of a lot more visible than the old dock. For one thing, the black arrows have always been terrible. The new 2D dock, however, is a dark transparency but bright white dots highlighting the open programs, which is a hell of a lot better than the tiny black arrows. My only gripe with the new 2D dock, visually, is that the white boarder has rouned corners, which I think doesn't fit with the rest of the interface. But aside from that... over the three dock types, I'll choose the new 2D dock any day.
I'm half expecting that halfway through Leopard's lifecycle, the 2D dock will be the default. Unfortunately, since the 2D one isn't visually as stunning, the best we'll get is the an option to use the 2D dock. I think the 3D one is here to stay... period... apple isn't going to back down on such a visually eye-catching element... even if it's annoying as hell.
Ya know, I think it all comes down to the perception of what the dock is and what application launching is for. Apple wants us to forget about which applications are open and which are not, because they want to toute that applications launching is so fast that it's not really even worth deliniating which applications are actively running, and which are not. The sad truth is, however, that that's not the case. Maybe with simple accessories like Safari and iChat, but not with MOTU Digital Performer, Final Cut, or Adobe After Effects. So that excuse for not clearly dilliniating open apps falls apart. But that's not the only reason why we rely on seeing which apps are open: we like seeing which apps are open because it jogs are memory as to which apps we are currently USING, if we're having to switch back and forth between many of them.
So, blue balls BAD! Absolutely terrible. They, right there, kill the usability of the 3D dock. If they had been nice big black balls, or bright white lights, that would have been great... but blue balls on a light blue background surrounded by icons which are predominantly... blue? Fuck off.
Get in line!
But seriously, I work for an NBC affiliate, and I'm beginning to get emberrassed by my franchise, soon I'll have to tell chicks that I work for CBS, just to get them to sleep with me. Even their best new shows: Chuck and Bionic Woman have horrific acting that brings down the quality, and makes them very dull and unappealing. I badass new idea can only go so far, unless you have the content to back it up, and NBC has proven that they don't have what it takes, most of the time. Heros seems to be the only thing they've got. Just think, for decades they were the undisputed network champ... how the mighty have fallen. And now this shit. Well, a lot of my friends are Heros fans, and they're kinda pissed that they can't get the show on iTunes anymore. Way to go NBC.
Meh, you'd be better off with Tales of the Abyss, Okami, ICO, Shadow of the Colosseus FF12, Dragon Quest VIII, and maybe Wild Arms 4 if you have the time. The rest aren't nearly as good, especially Star Ocean 3, which was an utter dissapointment.
Damn straight! Under a Glass Moon would be great.
I think ACOS would be highly improbable though, just too long. Quite a few people would love to tackle Metropolis or UaGM, maybe even some sick shit like Dance of Eternity. The fact is, DT has so many tunes that would be PERFECT for Guitar Hero. I mean, John Petrucci is like, THE current raigning guitar God who isn't simply a solo artist.
Somehow I think a couple of punk rockers got on board and basically said, "down with prog". Oh well, you know they'll be some of the first custom builds and downloadables.
The first 7 years of the PS2. Let's hope the next 7 are just as good!
Third outing on a "guitar rock gods" package, and still no John Petrucci, wtf? Not buying it until they give me some Metropolis action.
Yeah, I don't know why I upset you either. Yes, it seems I was incorrect, and thought that the sales reference refered to any kind of hard media, but why would that piss you off so much?
And good grief, my post wasn't flamebait, it just seemed that I was incorrect... there's a huge difference. I appologize to anyone whose day was ruined by my two sentances.
And here I'm one of the few who usually values Zonk's threads... but I was incorrect about his word usage here.
"Going Gold" refers to sales numbers. When a movie/album/game sells 500,000 copies (in the US), it is said to have "gone gold". Your usage is confusing and wreaks of misinformation.
True, also, keep in mind that the dpad is NOT velocity sensitive, that's what separates it from analog sticks. it's a simple on/off switch, so there's no way in being able to tell how hard or fast you've pressed down a direction. However, I don't see how this would effect mid-air dodging, mid-air dodging wasn't velocity sensitive even in Melee, it was like throwing, as long as you tapped a direction, the action was simply carried out in that direction. Therefor, Wave Dashing is probably possible with the WiiMote, but as I said ealier, the funky controls might make it too difficult to really be usable during battle. It's already at the edge of usability in Melee for all but the very best players.
I use After Effects (and Photoshop) on a daily basis. It's one of the more power-hungry and processor intensive programs out there. Why the FUCK would I want to cripple it 100-fold by moving it to a Java applet, or whatever? This HAS to be a joke, right? What next, Maya, Lightwave, and Cinema 4D Max as Flash applications on a website?
No fucking way. If Adobe does this, I'm jumping over to Motion.
- Only one taunt (Four on GCN/Classic)
- no uncharged smashes (C Stick Smashes)
- A host of other maneuvers that are just too slow and combersomb to perform on the WiiMote
The bottom line is, while they may have included all the neccessary moves, they haven't done them in a way that will be as accessable as on the GCN/Classic controllers. Lack of C-Stick smashes, for instance, is going to seriously handicap WiiMote-only players. Even smash champions use C-Stick smashes because the timing is just so much more precise.
I don't know of the controller is capable of allowing the performance of more complexly timed maneuvers like Wave Dashing and Dash Dancing. It may be theoretically possible, but probably not during gameplay.
I just started replaying Okami the other day, because I've been working on some computer animation, for a commercial, that was very much inspired by Okami, and I felt the need to go back and play it again. I just got Blue Dragon last night, so I'll probably stop playing Okami for a while, which is good, because I will be the first in line to pick up a Wii version. The only improvements on the game I could see are Widescreen and anti-aliasing, both which the Wii provide nearly out of the box. This just made my day!
From a social standpoint, there's no way to compare. Consider my actions:
I didn't have my credit card with me, so I originally "bought" it for $0, I think downloaded it, after having to wait a while. So that I could more easilly access the album from a place where I had a CD recorder, I uploaded it to my webspace. A few days later, I went back and paid $20, and then didn't download the album (since I already had it).
The fact is, because it's "free" people feel just fine about throwing around willy-nilly. But they still may be donating money for it, but their transactions may not be exactly the norm for an album release, precisely for that reason.
1. You're logged in AC... people don't usually respond to or mod AC posts. 2. Some people may have taken offense (personally, that was my first incination too, so I think they're stupid to have) 3. unfortunately, your response completely nullifies all "funny" in your first post, which I actually did innitially chuckle at. Thanks
So what you're saying is that Al Gore invented Star Trek, too???
j/k