I find it interesting that when a hyper violent game was made to poke fun at Jack Thompson, it was widely applauded here on Slashdot despite begind grotesquely violent and rather lacking in artistic merit. Meanwhile, someone else's attempt to confront us with the horrible but murky truth of Columbine is labeled as "just sick" and "going too far".
Thanks for the info, it seems rather difficult at this time to get good numbers. The wikipedia article isn't updated, and nexgenwars and vgcharts aren't entirely accurate.
Does anyone know if these are North America-specific numbers or if these are worldwide?
If it's worldwide it'll be somewhat disappointing, as both Nintendo and Sony will have fallen significantly short of their promised goals for the end of the year (4 million and 2 million respectively). If this is specific to North America, does anyone know of a source whereby we can figure out the worldwide totals?
Unfortunately, my next action was to log into my e-mail in order to complete the process of giving you a million dollars, but as that was not what you predicted my very next action would be I could not in good faith complete the process.
I do, however, believe my sophistic signiture is in need of revision. The brilliant minds of Slashdot have come extremely close, and even succeeded, at breaking the nonsense barrier and thus requiring me to slink out of the deal in the most underhanded ways possible.
I thought it was Blizzard who suffered the stings and arrows of fanatics on Patch Tuesday?
Joking aside, I'd personally appreciate something substanciative to back up the GP's statements regarding OS X. I do not doubt there is complexity or flaws, but the statements are sweeping and rather lacking in any quantitative value (how complex and insecure is OS X, perhaps in comparison to other OSs).
I hardly think the launch is irrelevant, but it isn't quite as important as everyone makes it out to be.
It is relevant the same way your birth and first 6-18 months of life on earth are. If the doctor somehow screws their part of the birthing process issues such as brain damage and physical disability can occur. Also important are the decisions your parents make in terms of how they care for you can have reprecussions that will last for years, but are not in and of themselves determinate of your course in life. Everything that happens after that is also important, and can repair or enchance whatever problems and blessings you received earlier.
A good or bad launch doesn't mean a console will succeed or fail, but it does weight the possible outcomes to an extent. If had Sony launched 10 million consoles and sold them all to happy gamers I'd think that would have given them a rather sizable and difficult to discount momentum. Rather than the uphill, but winnable, battle they now face they could have been coasting the rest of the generation. As it stands, one would be hard pressed to argue the PS3 launch helped them on their path to console domination.
The GGP asserted that the Wii is [i]only[/i] a souped up Gamecube, with the implication that this makes it not revolutionary. He then asserts that the Xbox360 and PS3 are truly revolutionary advances in gaming technology, with the implication being this is because of their souped up hardware. This should seem rather odd for the reasons the GP stated. In all technicality, the Xbox360 and PS3 are also just souped up Xboxs and PS2s (albeit to a greater degree).
That, I think, was the major point the GP was trying to make, not that there wasn't new and interesting technology in the Xbox360 and PS3. Perhaps a remark on the part of the GGP specifically noting this comparison was specifically in terms of computing hardware might have been pertinent.
I don't know how long Toejam and Earl has been on the official website, but it's been too long to just leave it there and not availible for me to consumerize. I want to be spoon fed my nostalgia at a much faster rate! Otherwise, I may actually be able to retire...
Agreed. I don't think a lawsuit is going to solve this problem. If this is really about the children who are not of age to make rational decisions, then we must wonder where the parents were and are.
How many kids, who aren't within shooting distance of being "legally" rational, do you know are even able to get to a McDonalds without their parents? I can't say that before age 12 at the earliest would a kid find themselves able to say, "Mom, I'm going to bike down to the McDs for lunch." That's twelve years where the parents have to make the decision to take their children to the McDonalds.
Similarly, how many people before high school get laptops? Unless you're in a very rich family you're probably stuck using the family computer for World of WarCraft, EverQuest, EvE or whichever poison you pick. Between parental controls and the fact that the computer rests rather immobile in a major room of the house I can't see how parents aren't willfully involved in letting their children be addicted to these games.
In my opinion, while the children may not have the rational capacity to make a decision in these matters they aren't the ones ultimately deciding. The best they can do is put the MMOG on their christmas wish list, or beg their parents for McDonalds. The parent ultimately has to give in or choose to do these things.
Now, if we're talking about rational adults becoming addicted to these games, that's a whole different story.
You're being far too vague. I don't think my car insurance would pay for damages if I used my car as a projectile in a strange, experimental game of darts. Obviously the car wasn't designed for this kind of use, but by your logic the car company should have been prepared for any and all uses beyond specifications.
That's somewhat unfair of me, despite your vagueness you're probably trying to make the point that Nintendo should have accounted for the fact that people were not necessarily going to use the Wii exactly as they should. That's a valid point, but that's exactly what they did.
The strap is there to account for a high probability Nintendo foresaw in flying Wiimotes. Being a more physically active console, and given that gamers already can get sweaty hands sitting almost comatose in front of a TV, the strap goes beyond "Used as designed" and accounts for gamers who will lose control of themselves and the Wiimote in the excitement of the game.
However, if you read Nintendo's statements regarding this you'll see that their testing did not predict the excessive amounts of force that some gamers have been putting into their pitches and swings. When I say excessive, I mean excessive because of the amount of duress it takes to break the strap. See this link for more detail.
Given the huge amount of force the original takes to break, I don't think we can really blame Nintendo for implementing a safety device that in all but the most extreme uses functions perfectly well.
Barring actual defects in some of the straps, I have to call this one for Nintendo.
Yes and no. The PS3 does use a new architecture, but there is literally a PS2 emotion engine chip in every PS3 to "emulate" PS2 functionality. I'm not sure we can really call it emulation when it's the original chip just doing the same thing it did before.
Except the difference here is there is a safety mechanism. The safety strap is like the guardrails on your typical bridge. No one expects the guard rails on a bridge to stop a car from driving off in a situation where they were driving unsafely (i.e classic movie chase scenes) and similarly no one should expect that similar excessive transgressions with the Wiimote can be prevented by the strap.
Both can and will prevent the vast majority of cases. Cars lurching somewhat or even strongly towards the open river will be forcefully corrected by the rail, and so too will the Wiimote maintain proximity to the hand that lost it.
The issue here is, did the strap break because of a defect which caused it to fail to sustain what should be a typical scenario, or was the user abusing a safety feature?
It is possible to love someone and disapprove of what they do. It may be useless to contemplate what a little love might have done to change the course of the respective histories of those you listed, but I wonder none-the-less.
So, Jesus violently throwing masses of bakers and money changers who were disrupting the house of God (the singular temple, of which there was one, hence the pilgrimage to Jerusalem) by constantly yelling their services in the middle of service is equivalent to killing people?
Violence is not a black and white concept, like the vast majority of life there are degrees to it, some of which are bad and some of which are good depending on context.
In no way is Jesus' cleansing of the temple adaquate justification for murder.
Actually, if you look at the pattern it's bigger than religion. You'll be hard pressed to find a single organized body of humans in history who did not engage in warfare, slaughter, pillage, rape and satanic bingo.
God is just one of many excuses used, none of which make it right.
You're taking the verse out of context. Leviticus is a book of rules established for the nation of Israel because they were too stupid for the Ten Commandments to be sufficient. They were harsh, but if you look at Israel's history anything less than that and they would get crazy deep into every last sin imaginable.
These rules were only applicable to the ancient nation of Israel.
This is not to say that other parts of the Bible do not condemn homosexuality, but it is to say that Christians who cite the Bible as a source for their hatred of homosexuals are twisting the work for their own ends. Homosexuality may be wrong, but hating homosexuals isn't right.
I think you aren't clear on what MMOGs are. That's Massively (as in huge) Multiplayer (as in many people) Online (as in the internet) Games (as in fun).
These games weren't designed with single player in mind. FFXI and WoW are clear evidence in this. Both require parties for much of their content. If you're looking at MMOGs and thinking "I wish that were single player" I recommend avoiding the genre as a whole. To want an offline, single player experience from a game designed for a massive number of people online at once is somewhat silly.
Diablo 2 and Half-Life were excellent games both in their single player and multiplayer aspects. The key difference here is they were not MMOGs. Their fundamental designs were for a single player game, but were well adaptable to multiplayer fun.
The cost is really the largest factor for many people, but I don't even think about it anymore. $15 a month is three movie rentals from Blockbuster or less than two tickets to an actual theatre (not counting food if you pay those outrageous prices). That's 4 to 6 hours of entertainment. There have been months in the past where I've played WoW for just a couple of hours the whole month and I don't feel I've wasted my $15. Just because I could get more out of my money by playing the game night and day doesn't mean I didn't get my money's worth by only playing a few hours.
I guess it's all just an American drive to maximize our dollar.
There's this strange idea that the MMORPG market has a set number of people, and that in order to have anyone you need to steal customers from an already existing MMORPG. While attracting players from other MMORPGs is hardly a bad thing, such logic would have dictated that there would only ever have been less than a million players in the days of EQ.
MMORPGs are a market with a large potential to grow, especially sci-fi themed games. We are already up to our necks in present and upcoming fantasy games, while there is only one noticable sci-fi MMORPG out today and a mere whisper of another one on the far horizon.
If Fallout is done well they need only have an easy way to get a trial of the game in order to have a good shot at being successful.
You don't need to have spent years on the internet to know that when someone makes common mistakes/shortcuts like luv and ur, they don't do it halfway. You'll never see the following sentence on the internet by someone doing it unintentionally.
Hello everyone, I was just thinking that ur all going to luv my latest blog entry.
This sentence of my creation highlights something everyone who's ever used IRC, read Barrens chat, or hacked the e-mail of a 14 year old knows. People who use ur and luv and similar shortcuts and mispellings will not be using proper punctuation, spelling and grammar. It doesn't happen.
Yet, here is what we have from the website. I will be pointlessly dissecting it.
here's the deal::: i (charlie) have a psp. my friend jeremy does not. but he wants one this year for xmas.
People do not use colons on the internet. That key is the jaded and lost son of the realm of QWERTY. People also make assumptions, assumptions such as their identity being well known. They won't be specifying that they are "charlie", you should already know that. If you don't, you're a noob. Jeremy fails to be derided for not having a PSP. Lastly, no one speaking like this would specify "this year", or type "one" out. Number keys are there 4 a reason.
so we started clowning with sum not-so-subtle hints to j's parents that a psp would be teh perfect gift. we created this site to spread the luv to those like j who want a psp!
No one on the internet can spell subtle, let alone know where to use hyphens. A common thing to notice is the use of larger words here were smaller ones would have sufficed. "started" could be "were" or "did". "created" is two syllabels longer than "made". The last sentence would more improperly be "we maed this site 2 giv luv 4 u who want a psp liek j!"
consider us your own personal psp hype machine, here to help you wage a holiday assault on ur parents, girl, granny, boss -- whoever -- so they know what you really want.
Again with the long words. Very few words over 2 syllabels are in the common lexicon on the internet. "consider", "personal", "holiday", "whoever", all unknown to the internet mind. Again with the hyphens as well. There are no "girl"s on the internet, only "gf"s, and when was the last time we saw "granny"? What kid this supposed age would have a "boss"?
we'll let you know how it works for us. pls return the favor.
more to come, c&j.
Anyone who uses ur is not going to type out "you". "you" is four characters too many as it is. Also, the kind of comraderie shown in this last sentiment is completely foreign. This is the internet, not a high tea. There are no favors, there are only noobs and 1337 h4x.
I think there's an important distinction to be made.
It is true that what Apple does with the iPod, making it cool, is what Sony is trying to do with the PSP. I don't think we can argue that point. However, their methods and the success thereof are quite different.
There's a very different feel to the approaches to both companies. Apple isn't exploiting subcultures and trends to advertise the iPod. They don't use 1337 h4x or urban themes to sell their product. They make their own ads, and make them cool. The problem with Sony's PSP advertisements is that they're trying to make the PSP cool by linking it to other things that are already considered cool (at least by marketers), rather than marketing it as cool unto itself. The side effect of Sony's strategy is that it ends up being rather misleading, underhanded and generally poorly received.
The PSP should be able to be cool on it's own, which Sony's marketers seem to have forgotten in lieu of the latest marketing trends.
I don't think we can i good conscience infer that because demand for the Wii and the PS3 is exceeding supply now that demand will continue unabated in the future. While it is unlikely that either system will sell poorly, it isn't clear how demand will hold up in the coming months. Indeed, what happends with demand in the coming months is more an indication of the health and potential of the systems, rather than something we can assume.
Slashdot Mirror
I find it interesting that when a hyper violent game was made to poke fun at Jack Thompson, it was widely applauded here on Slashdot despite begind grotesquely violent and rather lacking in artistic merit. Meanwhile, someone else's attempt to confront us with the horrible but murky truth of Columbine is labeled as "just sick" and "going too far".
I wonder how many of us here played either game.
Thanks for the info, it seems rather difficult at this time to get good numbers. The wikipedia article isn't updated, and nexgenwars and vgcharts aren't entirely accurate.
Does anyone know if these are North America-specific numbers or if these are worldwide?
If it's worldwide it'll be somewhat disappointing, as both Nintendo and Sony will have fallen significantly short of their promised goals for the end of the year (4 million and 2 million respectively). If this is specific to North America, does anyone know of a source whereby we can figure out the worldwide totals?
Unfortunately, my next action was to log into my e-mail in order to complete the process of giving you a million dollars, but as that was not what you predicted my very next action would be I could not in good faith complete the process.
I do, however, believe my sophistic signiture is in need of revision. The brilliant minds of Slashdot have come extremely close, and even succeeded, at breaking the nonsense barrier and thus requiring me to slink out of the deal in the most underhanded ways possible.
I thought it was Blizzard who suffered the stings and arrows of fanatics on Patch Tuesday?
Joking aside, I'd personally appreciate something substanciative to back up the GP's statements regarding OS X. I do not doubt there is complexity or flaws, but the statements are sweeping and rather lacking in any quantitative value (how complex and insecure is OS X, perhaps in comparison to other OSs).
Did Contact come out where you are? That's an excellent and atypical RPG from 2006 on the DS you might consider.
I hardly think the launch is irrelevant, but it isn't quite as important as everyone makes it out to be.
It is relevant the same way your birth and first 6-18 months of life on earth are. If the doctor somehow screws their part of the birthing process issues such as brain damage and physical disability can occur. Also important are the decisions your parents make in terms of how they care for you can have reprecussions that will last for years, but are not in and of themselves determinate of your course in life. Everything that happens after that is also important, and can repair or enchance whatever problems and blessings you received earlier.
A good or bad launch doesn't mean a console will succeed or fail, but it does weight the possible outcomes to an extent. If had Sony launched 10 million consoles and sold them all to happy gamers I'd think that would have given them a rather sizable and difficult to discount momentum. Rather than the uphill, but winnable, battle they now face they could have been coasting the rest of the generation. As it stands, one would be hard pressed to argue the PS3 launch helped them on their path to console domination.
I think you missed his point.
The GGP asserted that the Wii is [i]only[/i] a souped up Gamecube, with the implication that this makes it not revolutionary. He then asserts that the Xbox360 and PS3 are truly revolutionary advances in gaming technology, with the implication being this is because of their souped up hardware. This should seem rather odd for the reasons the GP stated. In all technicality, the Xbox360 and PS3 are also just souped up Xboxs and PS2s (albeit to a greater degree).
That, I think, was the major point the GP was trying to make, not that there wasn't new and interesting technology in the Xbox360 and PS3. Perhaps a remark on the part of the GGP specifically noting this comparison was specifically in terms of computing hardware might have been pertinent.
I don't know how long Toejam and Earl has been on the official website, but it's been too long to just leave it there and not availible for me to consumerize. I want to be spoon fed my nostalgia at a much faster rate! Otherwise, I may actually be able to retire...
Agreed. I don't think a lawsuit is going to solve this problem. If this is really about the children who are not of age to make rational decisions, then we must wonder where the parents were and are.
How many kids, who aren't within shooting distance of being "legally" rational, do you know are even able to get to a McDonalds without their parents? I can't say that before age 12 at the earliest would a kid find themselves able to say, "Mom, I'm going to bike down to the McDs for lunch." That's twelve years where the parents have to make the decision to take their children to the McDonalds.
Similarly, how many people before high school get laptops? Unless you're in a very rich family you're probably stuck using the family computer for World of WarCraft, EverQuest, EvE or whichever poison you pick. Between parental controls and the fact that the computer rests rather immobile in a major room of the house I can't see how parents aren't willfully involved in letting their children be addicted to these games.
In my opinion, while the children may not have the rational capacity to make a decision in these matters they aren't the ones ultimately deciding. The best they can do is put the MMOG on their christmas wish list, or beg their parents for McDonalds. The parent ultimately has to give in or choose to do these things.
Now, if we're talking about rational adults becoming addicted to these games, that's a whole different story.
You're being far too vague. I don't think my car insurance would pay for damages if I used my car as a projectile in a strange, experimental game of darts. Obviously the car wasn't designed for this kind of use, but by your logic the car company should have been prepared for any and all uses beyond specifications.
That's somewhat unfair of me, despite your vagueness you're probably trying to make the point that Nintendo should have accounted for the fact that people were not necessarily going to use the Wii exactly as they should. That's a valid point, but that's exactly what they did.
The strap is there to account for a high probability Nintendo foresaw in flying Wiimotes. Being a more physically active console, and given that gamers already can get sweaty hands sitting almost comatose in front of a TV, the strap goes beyond "Used as designed" and accounts for gamers who will lose control of themselves and the Wiimote in the excitement of the game.
However, if you read Nintendo's statements regarding this you'll see that their testing did not predict the excessive amounts of force that some gamers have been putting into their pitches and swings. When I say excessive, I mean excessive because of the amount of duress it takes to break the strap. See this link for more detail.
Given the huge amount of force the original takes to break, I don't think we can really blame Nintendo for implementing a safety device that in all but the most extreme uses functions perfectly well.
Barring actual defects in some of the straps, I have to call this one for Nintendo.
Yes and no. The PS3 does use a new architecture, but there is literally a PS2 emotion engine chip in every PS3 to "emulate" PS2 functionality. I'm not sure we can really call it emulation when it's the original chip just doing the same thing it did before.
Except the difference here is there is a safety mechanism. The safety strap is like the guardrails on your typical bridge. No one expects the guard rails on a bridge to stop a car from driving off in a situation where they were driving unsafely (i.e classic movie chase scenes) and similarly no one should expect that similar excessive transgressions with the Wiimote can be prevented by the strap.
Both can and will prevent the vast majority of cases. Cars lurching somewhat or even strongly towards the open river will be forcefully corrected by the rail, and so too will the Wiimote maintain proximity to the hand that lost it.
The issue here is, did the strap break because of a defect which caused it to fail to sustain what should be a typical scenario, or was the user abusing a safety feature?
It is possible to love someone and disapprove of what they do. It may be useless to contemplate what a little love might have done to change the course of the respective histories of those you listed, but I wonder none-the-less.
So, Jesus violently throwing masses of bakers and money changers who were disrupting the house of God (the singular temple, of which there was one, hence the pilgrimage to Jerusalem) by constantly yelling their services in the middle of service is equivalent to killing people?
Violence is not a black and white concept, like the vast majority of life there are degrees to it, some of which are bad and some of which are good depending on context.
In no way is Jesus' cleansing of the temple adaquate justification for murder.
Actually, if you look at the pattern it's bigger than religion. You'll be hard pressed to find a single organized body of humans in history who did not engage in warfare, slaughter, pillage, rape and satanic bingo.
God is just one of many excuses used, none of which make it right.
I'm not sure what's scarier, how nerdy that is or that it makes sense to me.
I am speechless at the incredible wit displayed in the parent, and I really mean that. Brilliant!
You're taking the verse out of context. Leviticus is a book of rules established for the nation of Israel because they were too stupid for the Ten Commandments to be sufficient. They were harsh, but if you look at Israel's history anything less than that and they would get crazy deep into every last sin imaginable.
These rules were only applicable to the ancient nation of Israel.
This is not to say that other parts of the Bible do not condemn homosexuality, but it is to say that Christians who cite the Bible as a source for their hatred of homosexuals are twisting the work for their own ends. Homosexuality may be wrong, but hating homosexuals isn't right.
I think you aren't clear on what MMOGs are. That's Massively (as in huge) Multiplayer (as in many people) Online (as in the internet) Games (as in fun).
These games weren't designed with single player in mind. FFXI and WoW are clear evidence in this. Both require parties for much of their content. If you're looking at MMOGs and thinking "I wish that were single player" I recommend avoiding the genre as a whole. To want an offline, single player experience from a game designed for a massive number of people online at once is somewhat silly.
Diablo 2 and Half-Life were excellent games both in their single player and multiplayer aspects. The key difference here is they were not MMOGs. Their fundamental designs were for a single player game, but were well adaptable to multiplayer fun.
The cost is really the largest factor for many people, but I don't even think about it anymore. $15 a month is three movie rentals from Blockbuster or less than two tickets to an actual theatre (not counting food if you pay those outrageous prices). That's 4 to 6 hours of entertainment. There have been months in the past where I've played WoW for just a couple of hours the whole month and I don't feel I've wasted my $15. Just because I could get more out of my money by playing the game night and day doesn't mean I didn't get my money's worth by only playing a few hours.
I guess it's all just an American drive to maximize our dollar.
There's this strange idea that the MMORPG market has a set number of people, and that in order to have anyone you need to steal customers from an already existing MMORPG. While attracting players from other MMORPGs is hardly a bad thing, such logic would have dictated that there would only ever have been less than a million players in the days of EQ.
MMORPGs are a market with a large potential to grow, especially sci-fi themed games. We are already up to our necks in present and upcoming fantasy games, while there is only one noticable sci-fi MMORPG out today and a mere whisper of another one on the far horizon.
If Fallout is done well they need only have an easy way to get a trial of the game in order to have a good shot at being successful.
I stand by my previous, wildly inaccurate statement! That is not a colon, clearly those are eyes!
This sentence of my creation highlights something everyone who's ever used IRC, read Barrens chat, or hacked the e-mail of a 14 year old knows. People who use ur and luv and similar shortcuts and mispellings will not be using proper punctuation, spelling and grammar. It doesn't happen.
Yet, here is what we have from the website. I will be pointlessly dissecting it.
People do not use colons on the internet. That key is the jaded and lost son of the realm of QWERTY. People also make assumptions, assumptions such as their identity being well known. They won't be specifying that they are "charlie", you should already know that. If you don't, you're a noob. Jeremy fails to be derided for not having a PSP. Lastly, no one speaking like this would specify "this year", or type "one" out. Number keys are there 4 a reason.
No one on the internet can spell subtle, let alone know where to use hyphens. A common thing to notice is the use of larger words here were smaller ones would have sufficed. "started" could be "were" or "did". "created" is two syllabels longer than "made". The last sentence would more improperly be "we maed this site 2 giv luv 4 u who want a psp liek j!"
Again with the long words. Very few words over 2 syllabels are in the common lexicon on the internet. "consider", "personal", "holiday", "whoever", all unknown to the internet mind. Again with the hyphens as well. There are no "girl"s on the internet, only "gf"s, and when was the last time we saw "granny"? What kid this supposed age would have a "boss"?
Anyone who uses ur is not going to type out "you". "you" is four characters too many as it is. Also, the kind of comraderie shown in this last sentiment is completely foreign. This is the internet, not a high tea. There are no favors, there are only noobs and 1337 h4x.
if ur goin 2 b 1337 u hav 2 b cool like m3 lol
I think there's an important distinction to be made.
It is true that what Apple does with the iPod, making it cool, is what Sony is trying to do with the PSP. I don't think we can argue that point. However, their methods and the success thereof are quite different.
There's a very different feel to the approaches to both companies. Apple isn't exploiting subcultures and trends to advertise the iPod. They don't use 1337 h4x or urban themes to sell their product. They make their own ads, and make them cool. The problem with Sony's PSP advertisements is that they're trying to make the PSP cool by linking it to other things that are already considered cool (at least by marketers), rather than marketing it as cool unto itself. The side effect of Sony's strategy is that it ends up being rather misleading, underhanded and generally poorly received.
The PSP should be able to be cool on it's own, which Sony's marketers seem to have forgotten in lieu of the latest marketing trends.
I don't think we can i good conscience infer that because demand for the Wii and the PS3 is exceeding supply now that demand will continue unabated in the future. While it is unlikely that either system will sell poorly, it isn't clear how demand will hold up in the coming months. Indeed, what happends with demand in the coming months is more an indication of the health and potential of the systems, rather than something we can assume.