Hell, in the days before the internet publishers would send patches out on floppy discs for free (as well they should). Getting your media replaced was as easy as sending the discs back to the publisher with a return address. A week or two later and you were back in business.
Forget optical media, if your copy is legit, the publisher should replace it at cost regardless of what kind of media it is or what's on it. DVD, CD, BD, ROM it doesn't matter. You paid for your license you don't need another.
"many games that lack innovation. He says EA and others need both to push more aggressively beyond traditional audiences to court 'casual' consumers and to experiment more with new sales approaches -- outside the norm of selling $50 to $60 discs with 40-hour games that he says few players ever finish. 'We're boring people to death and making games that are harder and harder to play,'" (emphasis mine)
So EA's idea of being innovative is copying Nintendo's recent targeting of casual gamers? Or maybe they're planning on making $40 short boring games that you can finish even if you are bored to death. If people only play 50% of the games they make, why bother spending the money to make the other 50%? Maybe customers won't get bored if there is just less game in there, and they'll make more money to boot. Why shake up the formula, just cut costs and see what happens.
They may intend on copying Nintendo but not in a good way. I think EA looked at the situation and thought that Wario Ware, Wii Sports, et. al. are short and simple, why bother with all this complexity when customers are clearly willing to spend $50 on somethihng that isn't much more than a tech demo. Personally I don't think that customers are really excited about spending $50 on WW because it was new and exciting. This time next year Nintendo will have games on the shelf that are longer, and more complex using what they learned from WW et. al. EA however will introduce a suite of party games for $60 that people will blow through in 5-10 hours.
If I was optimistic on EA's efforts I might hope that Nintendo executes before EA does, making it apparent to EA that the novelty of new/fun has worn off, and we now expect that there will be $60 dollars worth of content on that $60 disc. But I'm being overly optimistic. It was EA who also said they need to raise prices to foot the bill for HD content. Console game prices that is, the HD content being delivered on the PC platform apparently didn't need a price bump.
Indeed that some serious delusion right there. Most people wouldn't even notice, much less ask if someone is looking at their phone. If you're paranoid, wait until they're in the can, or busy elsewhere.
In any case, it's something RIM could fix. Rather than deny the problem.
Indeed, because of bugs in Apples OS and Apple Script I get oddball password demands much more often than Windows. Apparently sudo only works most of the time on OS X.
Never mind the applications that want to jack with the system which don't actually need to. Or to be fair, the OS doesn't do what it is supposed to do so you MUST jack with the system to make your app. work.
Fonts are a good example of something which has been busted in some fashion at one time or another on several platforms. Sometimes for many releases.
Personally I like the ridicule option... Application XYZ is doing ABC. That's not recommended behavior and is usually indicative of malicious software. We recommend you cancel the operation and remove it from the system.
Cancel/Cancel and remove application/Allow but sandbox that shit/Allow your shitty software to crap up the place.
Clearly I'll get nowhere with the MBA's and their "partners" but it sure would get developers, 1st and 3rd party, to clean up their act. Of course that would also require OS vendors make sure their API's did the right thing, and the documentation was complete and correct.
Pfft... that'll be the day.
No. You have some problems with your argument there.
If every machine sold since January 2004, a year before World of Warcraft shipped, were included in that tally, the total number of computers shipped doesn't even come close to 20 million. http://www.systemshootouts.org/mac_sales.html
This figure doesn't even break down non-pro mac books, mini's and older iMacs and Pro line hardware that can't cut it,. Machines still sold by Apple that represent large portions of Apples product line but do not run WoW "well" no matter how many features you disable.
I don't mean to say Blizzard can't make money with it, but your suggestion that one of the best selling games/developers of all time is being driven by an audience with less than 2.5 percent of the global market share is absurd.
Certainly publishers make good enough money porting to the Apple platform, but the vast majority of games that get the treatment are proven sellers that are basically guaranteed to be good enough to generate a fair return on the cost to port the code. These games aren't made successful by the macintosh version, that's just a little extra on the side. On a good day.
Don't forget the obligitory release day stories...
I spiked it like a football and it scratched, what a POS!
EDGE netwrok overrun by too much iPhone traffiic.
iPhone exclusive Flicr group.
Dropped my iPhone in the toilet, it still works.
Dropped my iPhone in the toilet, it doesn't work.
Lifehacker will have their 10 secret features of the iPhone article. Since no one reads manuals no one will notice that it's basically the getting started guide in HTML.
Gizmodo... iPhone sells out in one day, geeks enraged.
macroumors... Apple iPhone 2.0 sports 3g, 16GB storage and 3rd party apps for $299.
Engadget... iPhone DOA return rate unprecidented.
And last but not least...
IT BLENDS!!!
I just wanted to say thank you for not posting metadiscussion about the post, how much you hate the iPhone itself, or running off at the mouth with missinformation.
Seriously.
Sure they will, localization alone that turns one game into 3. Don't forget reissues and collections or that about 40% of those games aren't going to be seen on US shelves. Of the 105 left, about 90 percent of those games are multiplatform. Almost all of which load faster and play better on a 360 (when it works anyway) months before the PS3 version is published. Of the 10 or so PS3 exclusives 5 won't suck, and three of those will be good.
It will be a grand year for owning a PS3.
I kid though, it takes 2 years for any console to get a steady stream of good software. That has been true since the 80's. X-mas '08 that's when people will be buying PS3's to play the new Final Fantasy et. al.
Just a side note... I have found that as a general rule, you can wait until rumors start surfacing about the next product before buying the current one. You pay less, there are great games to play *now* and the local trade-a-game outfit is flush with them on the cheap.
Still, I bought a PS3 at release. To play Blu-Ray disc's! Honest!
Actually ZFS was never announced. Not by the one company that mattered.
And as for ZFS absence punishing customers, how so? It doesn't appear to have affected any of their products in any meaningful way. Long term being well known for ditching partners that spill the beans so to speak has been hugely beneficial to Apple. The iPhone is pleanty proof of that.
What I mean is their statement was very strong, the CEO of Sun Microsystems wouldn't have said that "ZFS is the standard FS for OS X 10.5" if the agreement hadn't already been made. They've been partnering on this for a long while now and this would be directly in Jonathan Schwartz's purview. Jonathan even knew it was going to be featured in the keynote address. Apple has also been including ZFS for some time as an option, but now appears to not be including it at all. I think that's pretty telling to go from Jonathan Schwartz proudly announcing that ZFS is the default FS for OS X to Apple saying "Pfft... not in my OS".
It's not like they only sold ATI cards. They just made due with what they had for a few days and from what I read they were well able to meet demand. The incident is well documented, look it up.
I'm not saying this is retailatory... But this wouldn't be the first time Apple has gone out of it's way to punish partners for making preemptive announcements about Apples products. One may recall not too many years ago ATI making a show about Apple using their video cards just before another WWDC (maybe it was Macworld, I forget). Apple proceeded to spend the night pulling ATI's cards from their ready to ship Macs. In keynote the following morning Steve Jobs announced (surely with ATI execs in the front row) that nVidia was their premier partner for Mac video. It has been said that it was 6 monts before ATI execs could get even an executive secretary on the phone.
But I thought that resolution independance was the big deal at WWDC. I mean the advertisements promoting it and all of those workshops going on this week... But nothing mentioned at the keynote.
I run XP in Parallels all day long some of that work is fairly processor intensive. Sure it's not as fast as native but it's close enough I've wasted more time reading this thread than I will all week waiting on Parallels. For that matter it's close enough most people would never notice. And I didn't have to buy a second machine.
Hell, even if the penalty was something like a quarter as fast I'd still use it. That's way better than quitting what I'm doing and rebooting. Now that I think of it, even if it were a quarter as fast, that was a perfectly good machine a few years ago which was perfectly fine for running Windows XP and gaming on.
The cables would be FAR cheaper than the extremely complex and expensive DVI/HDMI cables.
This is a marketing abberation, if FOC wire were used BestBuy et al. would still charge 90+ dollars for a length. I am not claiming that these are the prices you would pay in that fictional world, but it's not a bad guide for what is happening on the cheap end... A yard of duplex FOC is 8.36 at monoprice.com whereas 3 feet of HDMI is only 2.74. Even their best quality stuff is only 14.97.
On another note, people care about analog because that's what the marketplace already had installed. The vendor only has to make one connector and saves a few pennies per display, ships one cable (if they bother to include one) and a salesman/customer doesn't have to figure out if their computer will work with it. Worst case it's a sale of another 20 dollar adapter worth a dollar rather than a return. Not wholy insane in an era where manufacturers sold computers with soldier pads for an AGP slot but wouldn't put one on because it was an additional 1.5 cent part when they already had integrated graphics (analog baby). I hope it was an anomaly, but I remember a couple of times going to Compusa and they did not have a computer in stock that had a slot for the video cards they sold in the next isle.
Just kidding... I play on a Roleplay PVP server which is more or less equivalent to asking a bum to emote while he rapes you. Not my first choice, but if I want to play with my meatspace friends...
I blame anonymity myself. I mean I think that everyone from the Pope down to Jimmy Swaggart is pretty much an asshole at heart. Most of us have a handle on it most of the time and some people even try to avoid pushing other people's "buttons". But lack of accountability is a huge problem, add anonymity and some abstraction to the mix and many people loose their only reason for not being a jerk. It doesnt help that many people refuse to accept or assign accountability based on their own political motivations or worse, whim.
It is believed by some that many people are perfectly nice in person but for some unknown reason they become animalistic online... I think this is flawed logic. It's far more likely that said person(s) is a jerk, but concequences keep them from acting out.
So yea, a meaningful identity online would help tremendously. But that's a can of toxic, radio active worms, even if you did open it and balance exposure/anonymity in a way that kept people happy. Eventually (and not very long I'm sure) some politician somewhere would wreck it for everyone in a dead of nigh bill, or simply declare it their purview.
In the long run I think I would prefer to live with it as-is, and if I want decorum I'll get within arms reach.
Home ground through a drip coffee maker is just too easy. Cleanlyness is usally the only critical factor there. You can get a wee (wee) bit different flavor using other methods, but I've not tasted anything that was identifiably better. Maybe a french press, maybe, but stray grounds, time and mess usually make that not worth the effort.
Fresh beans (roasted that day) are good for a couple to three days. After that they start to taste a lot like everything else. Not bad, but the interesting parts that make a particular bean unique mellow significantly. I've found a pretty good shop in town that roasts their own and just take whatever they did that morning.
You could roast your own, but you're back to time, mess, and a house that smells strongly of coffee roasting.
Slashdot Mirror
That used to be policy way (way) back in the day.
Hell, in the days before the internet publishers would send patches out on floppy discs for free (as well they should). Getting your media replaced was as easy as sending the discs back to the publisher with a return address. A week or two later and you were back in business.
Forget optical media, if your copy is legit, the publisher should replace it at cost regardless of what kind of media it is or what's on it. DVD, CD, BD, ROM it doesn't matter. You paid for your license you don't need another.
So EA's idea of being innovative is copying Nintendo's recent targeting of casual gamers? Or maybe they're planning on making $40 short boring games that you can finish even if you are bored to death. If people only play 50% of the games they make, why bother spending the money to make the other 50%? Maybe customers won't get bored if there is just less game in there, and they'll make more money to boot. Why shake up the formula, just cut costs and see what happens.
They may intend on copying Nintendo but not in a good way. I think EA looked at the situation and thought that Wario Ware, Wii Sports, et. al. are short and simple, why bother with all this complexity when customers are clearly willing to spend $50 on somethihng that isn't much more than a tech demo. Personally I don't think that customers are really excited about spending $50 on WW because it was new and exciting. This time next year Nintendo will have games on the shelf that are longer, and more complex using what they learned from WW et. al. EA however will introduce a suite of party games for $60 that people will blow through in 5-10 hours.
If I was optimistic on EA's efforts I might hope that Nintendo executes before EA does, making it apparent to EA that the novelty of new/fun has worn off, and we now expect that there will be $60 dollars worth of content on that $60 disc. But I'm being overly optimistic. It was EA who also said they need to raise prices to foot the bill for HD content. Console game prices that is, the HD content being delivered on the PC platform apparently didn't need a price bump.
Indeed that some serious delusion right there. Most people wouldn't even notice, much less ask if someone is looking at their phone. If you're paranoid, wait until they're in the can, or busy elsewhere.
In any case, it's something RIM could fix. Rather than deny the problem.
Indeed, because of bugs in Apples OS and Apple Script I get oddball password demands much more often than Windows. Apparently sudo only works most of the time on OS X. Never mind the applications that want to jack with the system which don't actually need to. Or to be fair, the OS doesn't do what it is supposed to do so you MUST jack with the system to make your app. work. Fonts are a good example of something which has been busted in some fashion at one time or another on several platforms. Sometimes for many releases. Personally I like the ridicule option... Application XYZ is doing ABC. That's not recommended behavior and is usually indicative of malicious software. We recommend you cancel the operation and remove it from the system. Cancel/Cancel and remove application/Allow but sandbox that shit/Allow your shitty software to crap up the place. Clearly I'll get nowhere with the MBA's and their "partners" but it sure would get developers, 1st and 3rd party, to clean up their act. Of course that would also require OS vendors make sure their API's did the right thing, and the documentation was complete and correct. Pfft... that'll be the day.
No. You have some problems with your argument there. If every machine sold since January 2004, a year before World of Warcraft shipped, were included in that tally, the total number of computers shipped doesn't even come close to 20 million. http://www.systemshootouts.org/mac_sales.html This figure doesn't even break down non-pro mac books, mini's and older iMacs and Pro line hardware that can't cut it,. Machines still sold by Apple that represent large portions of Apples product line but do not run WoW "well" no matter how many features you disable. I don't mean to say Blizzard can't make money with it, but your suggestion that one of the best selling games/developers of all time is being driven by an audience with less than 2.5 percent of the global market share is absurd. Certainly publishers make good enough money porting to the Apple platform, but the vast majority of games that get the treatment are proven sellers that are basically guaranteed to be good enough to generate a fair return on the cost to port the code. These games aren't made successful by the macintosh version, that's just a little extra on the side. On a good day.
Don't forget the obligitory release day stories... I spiked it like a football and it scratched, what a POS! EDGE netwrok overrun by too much iPhone traffiic. iPhone exclusive Flicr group. Dropped my iPhone in the toilet, it still works. Dropped my iPhone in the toilet, it doesn't work. Lifehacker will have their 10 secret features of the iPhone article. Since no one reads manuals no one will notice that it's basically the getting started guide in HTML. Gizmodo... iPhone sells out in one day, geeks enraged. macroumors... Apple iPhone 2.0 sports 3g, 16GB storage and 3rd party apps for $299. Engadget... iPhone DOA return rate unprecidented. And last but not least... IT BLENDS!!!
I just wanted to say thank you for not posting metadiscussion about the post, how much you hate the iPhone itself, or running off at the mouth with missinformation. Seriously.
This is awesome I've been to troll and +3 insightful 3 times now!
I remember playinig that and thinking exactly "Now this is what an f'n PS2 is for!".
Sure they will, localization alone that turns one game into 3. Don't forget reissues and collections or that about 40% of those games aren't going to be seen on US shelves. Of the 105 left, about 90 percent of those games are multiplatform. Almost all of which load faster and play better on a 360 (when it works anyway) months before the PS3 version is published. Of the 10 or so PS3 exclusives 5 won't suck, and three of those will be good.
It will be a grand year for owning a PS3.
I kid though, it takes 2 years for any console to get a steady stream of good software. That has been true since the 80's. X-mas '08 that's when people will be buying PS3's to play the new Final Fantasy et. al.
Just a side note... I have found that as a general rule, you can wait until rumors start surfacing about the next product before buying the current one. You pay less, there are great games to play *now* and the local trade-a-game outfit is flush with them on the cheap.
Still, I bought a PS3 at release. To play Blu-Ray disc's! Honest!
And closer to being on topic tham many +5 insightful comments seen around here.
Since we're on the subject... I think the system could use a -1 metadiscussion moderation to boot.
The Stile Project Forum does not in fact have any effect, good or bad, on forged e-mail headers.
But if you want a video of a guy nailing his prick to a board and imagine that is a spammer, the SPF is the place to go to make yourself feel better.
Actually ZFS was never announced. Not by the one company that mattered.
And as for ZFS absence punishing customers, how so? It doesn't appear to have affected any of their products in any meaningful way. Long term being well known for ditching partners that spill the beans so to speak has been hugely beneficial to Apple. The iPhone is pleanty proof of that.
Well, it'd be pretty damn hard to take one back that was already either paid for or out the door.
Sun wouldn't have made the announcement.
What I mean is their statement was very strong, the CEO of Sun Microsystems wouldn't have said that "ZFS is the standard FS for OS X 10.5" if the agreement hadn't already been made. They've been partnering on this for a long while now and this would be directly in Jonathan Schwartz's purview. Jonathan even knew it was going to be featured in the keynote address. Apple has also been including ZFS for some time as an option, but now appears to not be including it at all. I think that's pretty telling to go from Jonathan Schwartz proudly announcing that ZFS is the default FS for OS X to Apple saying "Pfft... not in my OS".
It's not like they only sold ATI cards. They just made due with what they had for a few days and from what I read they were well able to meet demand. The incident is well documented, look it up.
I'm not saying this is retailatory... But this wouldn't be the first time Apple has gone out of it's way to punish partners for making preemptive announcements about Apples products. One may recall not too many years ago ATI making a show about Apple using their video cards just before another WWDC (maybe it was Macworld, I forget). Apple proceeded to spend the night pulling ATI's cards from their ready to ship Macs. In keynote the following morning Steve Jobs announced (surely with ATI execs in the front row) that nVidia was their premier partner for Mac video. It has been said that it was 6 monts before ATI execs could get even an executive secretary on the phone.
But I thought that resolution independance was the big deal at WWDC. I mean the advertisements promoting it and all of those workshops going on this week... But nothing mentioned at the keynote.
Did I miss something?
We already have EA:Sports and the relentless driveling commentary. We just need to get Jerry Springer covered and Cable is dead.
Perhaps, but that doens't change the fact that it didn't work.
I'd add that upgrading a HD in an iMac isn't exactly trivial either. Video card? Forget it.
I run XP in Parallels all day long some of that work is fairly processor intensive. Sure it's not as fast as native but it's close enough I've wasted more time reading this thread than I will all week waiting on Parallels. For that matter it's close enough most people would never notice. And I didn't have to buy a second machine.
Hell, even if the penalty was something like a quarter as fast I'd still use it. That's way better than quitting what I'm doing and rebooting. Now that I think of it, even if it were a quarter as fast, that was a perfectly good machine a few years ago which was perfectly fine for running Windows XP and gaming on.
The cables would be FAR cheaper than the extremely complex and expensive DVI/HDMI cables.
This is a marketing abberation, if FOC wire were used BestBuy et al. would still charge 90+ dollars for a length. I am not claiming that these are the prices you would pay in that fictional world, but it's not a bad guide for what is happening on the cheap end...
A yard of duplex FOC is 8.36 at monoprice.com whereas 3 feet of HDMI is only 2.74. Even their best quality stuff is only 14.97.
On another note, people care about analog because that's what the marketplace already had installed. The vendor only has to make one connector and saves a few pennies per display, ships one cable (if they bother to include one) and a salesman/customer doesn't have to figure out if their computer will work with it. Worst case it's a sale of another 20 dollar adapter worth a dollar rather than a return. Not wholy insane in an era where manufacturers sold computers with soldier pads for an AGP slot but wouldn't put one on because it was an additional 1.5 cent part when they already had integrated graphics (analog baby). I hope it was an anomaly, but I remember a couple of times going to Compusa and they did not have a computer in stock that had a slot for the video cards they sold in the next isle.
Just kidding... I play on a Roleplay PVP server which is more or less equivalent to asking a bum to emote while he rapes you. Not my first choice, but if I want to play with my meatspace friends...
I blame anonymity myself. I mean I think that everyone from the Pope down to Jimmy Swaggart is pretty much an asshole at heart. Most of us have a handle on it most of the time and some people even try to avoid pushing other people's "buttons". But lack of accountability is a huge problem, add anonymity and some abstraction to the mix and many people loose their only reason for not being a jerk. It doesnt help that many people refuse to accept or assign accountability based on their own political motivations or worse, whim.
It is believed by some that many people are perfectly nice in person but for some unknown reason they become animalistic online... I think this is flawed logic. It's far more likely that said person(s) is a jerk, but concequences keep them from acting out.
So yea, a meaningful identity online would help tremendously. But that's a can of toxic, radio active worms, even if you did open it and balance exposure/anonymity in a way that kept people happy. Eventually (and not very long I'm sure) some politician somewhere would wreck it for everyone in a dead of nigh bill, or simply declare it their purview.
In the long run I think I would prefer to live with it as-is, and if I want decorum I'll get within arms reach.
Home ground through a drip coffee maker is just too easy. Cleanlyness is usally the only critical factor there. You can get a wee (wee) bit different flavor using other methods, but I've not tasted anything that was identifiably better. Maybe a french press, maybe, but stray grounds, time and mess usually make that not worth the effort.
Fresh beans (roasted that day) are good for a couple to three days. After that they start to taste a lot like everything else. Not bad, but the interesting parts that make a particular bean unique mellow significantly. I've found a pretty good shop in town that roasts their own and just take whatever they did that morning.
You could roast your own, but you're back to time, mess, and a house that smells strongly of coffee roasting.