So what's changed in the last twenty years to make Nintendo "not hardcore" all of a sudden? They had Mario, Zelda, and Metroid back on the NES and they've still got Mario, Zelda, and Metroid on the Wii. Anything that Nintendo didn't make was a third party game and Nintendo doesn't have a lot of control over what third parties want to make on the Wii. Maybe it's not Nintendo that has gotten less hardcore, but all of the third parties that have.
It's pretty obvious that Nintendo is catering to their core with new showings from all the favorite franchises established over the years. However, either Nintendo was never hardcore and it's ridiculous to assume they should be now, or Nintendo has been and still is hardcore and everyone just needs to stop whining about it.
If the Wii doesn't interest you, don't buy any games for it. My only question to you is, what kinds of games are you actually interested in playing? I think Nintendo has done a pretty good job covering most areas at the present and in the coming months.
Thanks for the Monkey Ball tip, though. I haven't seen it in stores so either it's been sold out and I just assumed it wasn't out yet or the stores haven't been carrying it, which seems odd. Then again I haven't looked for any new Wii games for a few months now since I've been getting a lot of old games from the VC.
"As I said before, it doesn't matter what's "fair" or "unfair". Were you complaining about Sony's year lead with the PS3, over the Xbox and GameCube? And again, even though the 360 had a year lead over the Wii, we see that Nintendo looks like they'll be able to catch up easily."
What happened last generation really isn't relevant to this discussion and I haven't brought it up. I never said the year head start was unfair, only that the PS3 is selling the same number of units globaly as the Xbox 360 thus far.
"According to that graph, the Wii is beating the pants off both the PS3 and 360. The 360, however, is also beating the PS3 by a not-insignificant margin, and has been for several months now."
A margin which hasn't changed, thus the whole bit about the same pace. If that margin were growing wider then your argumetns would be a lot more credible, but since it isn't you can't say that the PS3 will do better or worse for a certainty. It's mostly just baseless speculation.
I'm really tired of this argument. If people want to complain about the lack of hardcore games now and that Nintendo has abandoned the core, where were they last generation? As far as I can tell, we're getting the same Zelda, Mario, and Metroid that were were last generation. These may have slightly different appeals, but they're still great games for gamers. If you don't think these games are hardcore, then what would you define as hardcore? If these games don't fit that bill, then Nintendo didn't have anything for you last generation for the most part and abandoned you long ago.
I think once Super Smash Bros. and a Monkey Ball game manage to come out they'll be fine in my eyes. Both of these games could be considered fairly casual, but my friends and I played them relentlessly when we were back in high school. We'd have ten hour Monkey Ball or Smash Bros. sessions down in my friends basement, trading off the controller for single player aspects of the game or going heads up in multiplayer, trying to break each others records or square off for bragging rights. You can even play Wii Sports pretty hardcore as a few of my friends and I found out over last Thanksgiving when I brought my new Wii home and we ended up playing Wii boxing for almost four hours straight. Even my friend's dad got involved and had a hell of a time.
They reason they spent so much time on Wii Fit is because it's completely new and hasn't really be done before. They want to make sure that it gets good press coverage and that people are aware of it. They want to give something new to the casual gamers who really haven't had much since Wii Sports. You can't build up this great system for the more casual gamers and then leave them out in the cold. With Mario Kart, Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime: Corruption, and Super Smash Bros. all coming out within the next six months or so, I'd say they've got their core pretty well covered.
If for whatever reason you consider hardcore gaming to by violent or mature rated games (in which case I think you're an idiot) then there's plenty of fun to be had with The Godfather: Blackhand Edition, Resident Evil 4, and Manhunt 2 as well as the new Resident Evil game when they come out. I'm pretty sure that there will eventually be plenty of shooters and other such games on the console as well. It's only been out for abouth eight months now, give it some time.
I think the problem is that most people tend to think of themselves as hardcore gamers when it's convenient for them to say so. I'd wager that a majority of the people who claim that they are, really aren't. Just remember that because you play a lot of video games doesn't necessarily make you hardcore. Did you explore Twilight Princess without a guide to get all of the extra items? Do you do speed runs through the original Super Mario Bros. in order to see who could get the best time? Have you played a game competitively at a tournament? If you don't answer yes to questions like that, I don't consider you hardcore. You just spend too much time playing video games. Get over yourself.
So until someone can come up with a legitimate reason to suggest that Nintendo has abandoned their core or stopped caring about hardcore gamers, I think you're all just a bunch of whiny bitches looking for something to piss and moan about. Either Nintendo never was hardcore and stopped catering to their core ages ago or you're completely off base and full of crap. Maybe some of you are under the delusion that you're in Nintendo's core when you really aren't. I just think it's a load of crap no matter how you slice it.
The original Fable received a lot of hype and was the major driving factor in getting me to purchase an Xbox, but after playing it I was horribly disappointed. It was an alright game on its own, but the massive amount of hype and the fact that for every cool thing you could do in the game there were at least two more that you thought you should be able to do, but couldn't, managed to leave a sour taste in my mouth.
I like second chances though and with more powerful hardware, the Xbox 360 might help bring some of the missing features in the first game to the sequel. The only problems I'm seeing so far is that Molyneux seems to be making grand claims again and I'm wondering if they'll pan out or I'll just be left disappointed again. It's nice to hear that the game is looking good, but with the hardware capabilities of the Xbox 360 any game can look good if it wants to look good. He really needs to worry less about the looks and more about making sure there's plenty of feature rich gameplay. You can always spend the last few months touching up the graphics, but it's a real pain in the ass to make sure last minute feataure additions work smoothly.
I'm a little leery after the last go-around, but I'm still hopeful that Fable 2 shapes up into an excellent game. Maybe it will be the game that motivates me to go out and buy an Xbox 360.
The problem really isn't mapping where the sword should be or how it should move. Eventually someone will figure out a good way to make this possible and you'll be able to wave your Wiimote around and have the coresponding on-screen sword follow its motions very carefully. The real problem comes into play when you have another sword, or anything to deflect its blows added into the mix.
For example, I'm fighting an enemy with my sword and swing at him. He counters, meeting his blade with mine, causing both to bounce back from the force slightly or to slide against each other. However, my actual hand has met with no such resistance and has followed through as though my blade sliced through his sword, body, or anything else in the way as though it were nothing. On screen I'm locked sword to sword with my foe, but my hands suggest that I slashed through him. How is the mapping handled from here? Should the position that my hand ends up in be the new centered location for determining the swords next move, which would make further attacks awkward and unrealistic, or should the blade on the screen magically move to the position my hand suggests it's in, which doesn't make for a very realistic game.
The best idea I've ever heard for this solution is to have the controller respond with some type of feedback, a rumble, a sound, or something else, to notify the user that their blow was deflected. The user would then be unable to attack further until they managed to sync the remote position with their hand with what is displayed on the screen. Assuming the feedback is powerful enough and the player manages to learn to anticipate the deflection enough, eventually they will serve as their own feedback, stopping their swing as soon as they feel it has been deflected. To use the above example again, as soon as I were to feel a rumble from the Wiimote or hear two swords clashing, I would halt my downward motion and position the controller as though my blow had been met, allowing me to once again regrain control and continue with the battle.
While there are a lot of programing difficulties to be worked out, it still requires a lot of time for the player to become accustomed to the system and actually care to become familiar enough with it to enjoy playing the game. I don't forsee this as being something that casual players would be interested in taking the time to accomplish, and I'm not entirely sure if the hardware available now can offer all of the necessities in order for this to succeed.
I've simply presented one way of looking at it and why I think it's valid.
I think it's somewhat unfair that Sony should magically be able to catch up to Microsoft despite the year lead. Assuming that Sony had a better launch and sold out much like the Wii, people would probably spin things the other way and say that Microsoft is doomed because Sony is set to outpace them. If the sales trends continue, they'll be about even, the only difference is that Sony would be about a year behind Microsoft. If we were both running a race and I had an hour head start over you it doesn't necessarily make the most sense to compare our heads up relationship so early on in the race. If you're running only as fast as I am, I'll only finish the race an hour ahead of you, but if you're running at a different speed, the end results can change significantly. This early on it makes far more sense to compare the rate.
With E3 and all the new games previewed or mentioned, I think that some change is inevitable. I can't really say for sure exactly what that change is, but I'll just continue to moniter the sales results and draw my own conclusions.
The only problem is that 'doing fine' isn't 'doing great' which is where Sony wants to be right now. Dropping the console price could very well be a start to getting there, but they need more than just that. I made my original post because of the general amount of FUD that's being slung in Sony's direction. Even if the PS3 continues on a lackluster course, Sony won't be out of the console business anytime soon.
Funny that someone else read my post and decided to call me a Sony basher. I just call 'em like I see them.
Why does everyone seem to assume that if you have something nice to say about a company that you're obviously taking money from them to spread good news about the company?
Obviously the PS3 and PSP haven't done as well as Sony had hoped, which is why they've obviously cut the price on the PS3 so early in the consoles life cycle.
I've only been suggesting that they're not as doomed as everyone seems to think they are. There are a lot of people who seem to like to slam the PS3 just because it's made by Sony, the same company involved in the rootkit fiasco. The same goes almost double for Microsoft and a lot of the Xbox 360 hate that gets spread around on Slashdot and other sites like Digg. Just because I'm not joining in the two minutes hate like everyone else doesn't make me a shill.
Do I think Sony will flop? No, I think that they'll do fine, but there's a pervasive belief in the media and a lot of people that the PS3 is doing horribly and is going to fail. It's almost contagous in that it's causing companies like Konami to debate the exclusivity of the MGS4 and has caused Sony to lose a lot of exclusives. It's a snowball effect, really.
The PS3 might many of the same games that made the PS2 so popular, but guess what, so does Microsoft this time around. Last time around the block GTA hit the PS2 first, now it's going to be on the 360 the exact same time. The only difference is that Microsoft will be seeing some exclusive content that the PS3 won't.
Go ahead and take a look at what happened to Nintendo. The Nintendo 64 had a lot of the games that made the SNES great and the GameCube had an arguably better array of games than the Nintendo 64, but they lost market share to the point that many people were questioning how long until they pulled out of the hardware business like Sega did. I thought this was a load as much as I think most of the current FUD against Sony is, but it's out there.
The industry can be pretty unforgiving. Just look at the gutted corpses that are Sega and Atari and it's not too unreasonable to suggest that if the market perceives them as a failure, they just might actually fail. Sony doesn't have to convince me that they'll do ok, but they do have to convince a lot of other people that they'll be around for the next generation.
I think it gives them some credibility when they talk about their ten year product cycle for the PS3. If the PS2 is still receiving new games and versions of games that aren't showing up on the previous generation consoles of their competitors they can point to this and how they stand behind their product. The fact that the PS2 is outselling all other consoles short of the Wii and still has content being developed for it is amazing considering that we're over a year into the next generation.
I think you're just muck racking and naysaying, trying to proclaim the death of Sony when you don't have anything of real substance. If you want to suggest that Sony is failing at least offer something more than a shot at the success and continued viability of the PS2 as a platform.
I think that this year's E3 was exactly what Sony needed last year. Overall I think they showed off plenty of eye candy and a few exclusives that should help to drive sales in the coming months. The only problem is that many of these key games (MGS4 in particular) won't be coming until after the holiday season. A lot of the media and public opinion is that Sony is failing and a big holiday season for them would help to dispell some of those doubts.
What I liked most about their conference is that they focused on showcasing the games coming out on their system instead of talking about sales figures and statistics (After watching the first fifteen minutes of the Nintendo conference, I was about ready for a nap). I suppose most of that stems from not having a lot of good news on that front. I don't mind a little bit of business, but I'm really more interested in seeing the games.
Depending on how things turn out over the next few months and other games that Sony manages to add to the PS3, I might almost consider buying one now that they've dropped the price a little bit. Hopefully I'll get to learn a little more about some of the games being released before the holidays to see if it's worth purchasing one of them. It also seems as though they've done a lot to revitalize the PSP, which is also a lot more appealing.
Overall I think that they should've given me a more compelling reason to puchase one of these during the holiday season or right now, but I think with the recent price drop and some of the good news from E3 that sales should pick up a little in the following weeks. If nothing else at least Sony has managed to pull its head out of its ass and get back on the right track. They still might end up like Nintendo during the GameCube era where they didn't receive a lot of support. They've still got a lot of leg work to prove to the rest of the world that they're a major contender.
Didn't get to watch it live since Gamespot was having some kind of issues with their live stream and I couldn't find another one for free. Guess I'll have to check on google video for it later. I did read through about five different live blogs to get a good feel for the presentation though and overall I think they did alright.
I would have liked to see more focus on some of the third party exclusives that were being brought to the Wii, something that seems a little lacking. I know that a lot of companies have pledged support and are releasing games, but a lot of them turn out to be crappy ports that no one's interested in. They probably should have shown something from Square Enix in more detail.
I'm glad that Mario Galaxy and Smash Bros. are dated now and it'll be nice to finally have some AAA games coming out. Hopefully, I'll be able to stand the wait between now and then. Announcing Mario Kart for 1Q 2008 also helps to let everyone know that there won't be another gaming drought, at least not for a while. Hopefully there will be some good AAA third party releases by then to start picking up the slack.
I'm glad they made some announcements about expanding online play in games on the system, but I still want to know more about it and how all of it will work. I'm not a huge fan of friends codes and would prefer that they used a set-up more akin to Xbox Live. At least they're finally catching up to Sony and Microsoft in terms of online play.
The Balance Board and their new light gun look like some interesting additions. I can see how the light gun adaptor would help to break down some of the barriers between casual and hardcore gamers. I also suspect that WiiFit will do a lot better than most people will give it credit for.
I'm going to go see if I can find a stream for the Sony conference now.
After watching their press conference I'm a little mixed about it. I liked the fact that they didn't bother talking too much about what's coming out far off in 2008, but talked about what we could be expecting to see in time for the holidays. It's interesting to see what's in the pipes, but I liked that they highlighted the games showing up in the near future. I also think they did a good job pointing out some of the exclusives that they were going to have as well or what kind of exclusive features (GTA IV downloadable content) that would only be showing up on the Xbox 360.
I think that their efforts in terms of family games was a little on the week side. I can understand they want to get into the same marketspace as the Wii, but it seems as though it's an afterthought for them. I think that their initial core market is mature gamers who enjoy FPS games and such. The Scene It game just seemed kind of awkward for a console. I think the majority of Xbox 360 owners don't really care too much about these games. I would have rather seen more focus on their core.
I really could care less about their Live for Windows information as well, but I've never been much of a computer gamer. I've always liked E3 for the focus on the consoles.
One thing that really stuck out, and this always seems to happen at pretty much every conference, is that some celebrity or designer comes out to highlight a game and they come off sounding stiff and awkward. The lady talking during the Assassins Creed preview made me cringe. The Madden demo also felt forced. Please reherse or find some more genuine presenters. It makes everything look more professional. Last year Sony was horrible for this reason.
Overall, not a bad showing, but it didn't feel as though they were trying to generate a lot of buzz. Maybe that's just an effect of the new format of E3 though. Looking forward to both of the press conferences tomorrow and what Sony and Nintendo have in the works.
I don't know what people think I'm a troll or some kind of Sony shill. I really have no love for either specific company, but as I pointed out, I feel that Sony is catching too much crap. As I pointed out in my initial post, their early sales trend follows closely to the Xbox 360 and that you can't really call the Xbox 360 a huge success and the PS3 a collosal flop in the same breath. It just doesn't make sense to me to say that.
Someone made a post earlier pointing out that this comparison was unfair because the 360 had supply problems that limited early sales. I simply pointed out that by the time people could easily walk into a store and see Xbox 360's on store shelves to buy them, they weren't doing so at any rate faster than what they were doing when there was a shortage. I was more or less suggesting that they'd reached a saturation in the rate that they could sell the consoles. If they hadn't, you would see an increase in their sales rate, which we haven't except around the holiday season, which is normal for many products. Otherwise the rate of sales hasn't changed much at all and probably won't until the holiday seasons or a killer app for the system is released that results in increased sales.
Similarly, the PS3 reached a similar state at its old price, but now that they've dropped the price, it's possible that their rate of sales will increase.
What I fail to see is why you have some problem admitting to the fact that the PS3 is selling just as well as the Xbox 360 did at launch. I don't own either of these consoles and don't plan on owning either of them any time soon for various reasons. I do own a Wii, but am mostly waiting for new games to come out for it. I owned each console from the previous generation (Dreamcast included) and will eventually own all of the consoles from this generation.
My view is that the PS3 is doing just fine and that everyone has spent so much time decrying it as a failure that they're actually starting to believe it. Look at the numbers and see for yourself that the PS3 is on track globally to sell the same number of units in the same time frame that the Xbox 360 has done. If you don't like my analysis that's your own business, but you can't look at those numbers and suggest that the PS3 is somehow doing worse. If you want to do that, point out the game library or lack of online functionality. Use something that might actually be valid.
The price cut is also a new thing. The fact that people have responded so positively to the price cut in such a short time could suggest an increase in sales and a spike in the rate of sales, which would be good news for Sony. Only time will tell how much of an impact this will have, but right now it's impossible to either affirm this as a major turnabout for Sony or dismiss it as a quick jump in sales.
My assumption clearly states that as long as the demand outpaces the supply, any new consoles introduced to the market will be immediately purchased (read stories about how Wii's are still flying off shelves as an example). However, it's been known that there have been Xbox 360's on store shelves in the wild now for some time. I think that by early summer you could easily walk into a store and pick one up. The fact that there were there extra consoles available for puchase that weren't, suggests that the Xbox 360 reached a point of saturation in the market. If it hadn't, there wouldn't have been consoles on store shelves. The pace of the sales has been fairly similar with the exception of the holiday season when purchases spiked and have since returned to a similar rate before the holidays. We can't ever know for a certainty that if Microsoft hadn't had supply issues, that their sales would have been greater. Even assuming that they were, the long run results would still likely be the same.
I think that if you use your method of comparison, it makes Sony look even better. Then you can point out that they're compeating with an established compititor that has similar graphical capabilities, a superior online implementation, a larger library of games, and costs only two-thirds as much. The fact that the PS3 can compete with that while trying to ramp up support is a small miracle. It makes an even stronger case that Sony isn't in the trouble that everyone seems to be suggesting they are.
If you look at the current sales growth, you'll see that globally, the PS3 and the Xbox 360 are roughly even currently, and have similarities in their launches.
Look at the sales rate on that graph. If your statement were entirely true, then as soon as more supply became available, the Xbox 360 would have seen a large spike in sales, but the sales trend continues at the same pace until the Christmas season when you see the sharp increase. I imagine that Sony will experience something like this with the PS3 and then fall back to normal, as did the Xbox 360.
There are plenty of Xbox 360's out in the wild right now that are sitting on shelves and Microsoft had to decrease their shipment target from 15 million down to 12 million by the start of July, 2007. I think that they've found out that despite the initial clamour, that the consoles that they released within the first five months were enough to saturate the market for that time period. Had they managed to release more I don't think that the end results would be very different than they are now.
The only difference is that Sony overestimated their sales and produced more than they could sell, requiring them to slow production or find a way to move more units to keep up with their production. Considering that like Microsoft, Sony has a number of other divisions in the company that can support the gaming division, they can just bleed money on the PS3 and worry about making it back later.
I'm going to keep watching the sales charts and we'll see if there are any major changes in the coming months. For now it's a close race though.
On another interesting note, while messing around I noticed that according to those charts the Gamecube has actually sold more units than the original Xbox. That may suggest Microsoft came in third in the last generation. Then again second place is largely meaningless when the first place company pushed over twice as many units as the second and third place companies combined.
I think people really like to rag on the PS3 for not being vary successful, but it seems to me that it's not doing terribly bad. If you look at sales numbers and align the launches of the PS3 and the Xbox 360, the PS3 is more or less on the same track that the Xbox 360 was on.
If you check Amazon you can see that the PS3 moved up to the number one selling item in the video game section. I think it was substantially lower (If I recall correctly it was 28th) before this from what I've been reading on other sites.
With E3 and the possibilities of some big ticket games being shown, It's possible for Sony to pick up even more steam. They've done a lot to shoot themselves in the foot, but I think they can still make a decent showing this round. Right now it's outpacing the Gamecube and the original Xbox, both of which were wonderful systems with great exclusives. I think Sony is given a lot more crap than they deserve.
I don't think it's as bad as you make it out to be. In your own post you point out that if people are not at the show, they'll be just as able to watch some of the content or read about it on the internet. In fact, there was a lot of things at previous E3's that weren't shown to the public and the press weren't allowed to talk openly about. I'd read some of the reports released about which games were going to be making the biggest splashes and some of the journalists would drop names that I'd never heard of because they weren't out on the floor open to the general public to blog about.
With a drastic decrease in the number of non-journalists and small bloggers, I think that reporting will actually be better. Instead of having to wait four hours in line to get a hands on impression of Wii games, journalists might only have to wait an hour, giving them more time to look into other games and products, increasing the total amount of reporting that they can do. For me this results in more total information being put out that I can gobble up.
I think that this actually might help out smaller publishers because after a journalist has seen all of the main attractions from the key players in the industry, they'll have some time to check out some of the other games at the show. If you don't need to wait several hours in line to get fifteen minutes of Mario Galaxy for a preview, perhaps you can check out what a small publisher is putting out and do some reporting on that as well. Just because there aren't throngs of casual gamers and people not as connected to the industry, doesn't mean that the media won't be able to spot interesting projects from new or small companies. Many of these journalists are also avid gamers of sorts with varying intrest.
I think that the Penny Arcade Expo does a much better job by being entirely for the gamer who doesn't have anything to do for the industry. The fact that some of the major companies in the gaming industry have decided to attend the event suggest that it can do a good job of emulating the part of E3 which will no long exist. E3 started out as a trade show for the press, drifted away from that, and is now trying to move back towards that. As I received all of my E3 information from the media over the internet or in gaming magazines, I can't really say that this is a bad thing.
Back in May there were articles floating around that Microsoft expected the Xbox division to be profitable in 2008. However, they've recently decided to offer an extended warrenty to customers in order to deal with the high failure rate of the Xbox 360. An earlier Slashdot article has this estimated to cost Microsoft around one billion dollars.
The earliest reports pegged the Xbox as costing about five hundred through seven hundred dollars to manufacture, a loss of a few hundred dollars on each console sold. This article published around the time of the PS3 launch puts the cost of Xbox 360 components at around seventy dollars under the final unit cost (manufacturing and other costs were not calculated into this figure so it may be safe to assume that they were breaking even or close to it at that time).
With the costs of the new warrenty (in addition to any costs that can be associated with the honoring existing warrenties to cover the high failure rates of the console) and cutting the price which changes the profitability on each unit sold, when does Microsoft now expect their Xbox division to become profitable?
Essentially what it means that as your character becomes progressively more powerful (obtains a higher level, better items, etc.) enemies also scale similarly. There are a few different RPGs that have implemented a system similar to this one. Final Fantasy VIII comes to mind and so does Lunar: Silver Star Story.
For the most part I think it's silly and leads to situations where that sewer rat you had to kill at the start of the game ends up being as powerful as the gigantic dragon that you have to slay near the end.
I've purchased more games over the years that I care to count and I've enjoyed most of the ones that I've purchased. For the most part, cost was never a big factor in purchasing games, but with the increased costs of games this most recent generation, I've been more leerly towards purchasing titles without doing a good amount of research into them first.
Similarly, I used to have a subscription to Xbox Live but haven't played on it in a very long while. It was a fairly good service in and of itself (most of the shortcomings deal more with the people who use it than with the technical details of the service) and not really all that bad of a deal for the roughly four dollars a month that it cost. At the time it was completely free of adertisements or anything else designed to get me to fork out more cash.
However, now that there seems to be a store selling virtuals goods and other things as well as increased advertisement both online and in the games themselves, will part of the money earned by the companies who produce these games and host the online system be used to offset some of the cost that I pay for these games and services? However, if I'm cruising around in my "Built Ford Tough" Warthog in Halo 3 and then looking over the stats in the post-match Pepsi rundown, I'd like to pay a little less than the full price. If you're going to subject me to crap advertising that I'd like to escape and expect to charge me just so that I can be subjected to it, I'm not going to spend $60 on your game or $50 on your online service.
"Newsweek reported that Take Two had wanted to continue its long-standing practice of giving Sony a lengthy timed exclusivity on the game, but they didn't want it. Newsweek says that former Sony Computer Entertainment president Ken Kutaragi's 'radio silence' on the issue left Sony's American execs without the authority to make deals, and nothing happened. Same with... Assassin's Creed"
A lot of people have attributed some of the generally accepted poor decisions in the PS3's design to be Ken Kutaragi's doing, but I wasn't aware that he had anything to do with this. How can you not look at a game such as Grand Theft Auto IV and realize that it will be a major mover on consoles in the North American region. The sales numbers for the game during the PS2 generation were the best for any game on the console. Either he's incredibly stupid or was completly blinded by pride and assumed that consumers would flock to the new console regardless of whether or cost two dollars or two thousand and regardless of whether or not there were any good games on the platform.
I would have encouraged Take Two not only to release on the PS3 first, but to make the game big enough that it would need to span at least two DVD's, just to rub it in the face of anyone who said you didn't need Blu-Ray. Do you know how pissed off I would be if I had to switch DVDs ever time I drove to a certain part of the map? It doesn't matter if any exclusive they have eventually trickles out onto the Xbox 360, they just need something to create some buzz about and a set of good games that were designed for the PS3 first instead of lazily ported over after the fact.
What the hell was Ken thinking (or not thinking more likely) when all of this was going down?
Additionally, getting extra PS3's into the wild will increase the number of game sales which also increases profit for Sony. In addition to this, every PS3 out there is also a Blu-Ray player and helps move Sony a few steps closer to winning a format war that they've invested a lot of money in. If Blu-Ray wins out, people are more likely to start buying Blu-Ray players and Blu-Ray movies (both of which Sony sells) which will also generate some extra revenue for Sony.
There are probably a few more angles I haven't seen, but I think that covers most of it.
Imagine if you will, that Sony has produced six million PS3 consoles up to this point. If they have sold roughly half of those for six hundred dollars and lose two hundred on every sale, then they will have lost six hundred million on the consoles they have sold, but will have lost nearly two and a half billion dollars on the consoles that they haven't sold. If they were to drop the price of the console to five hundred dollars and sell the remaining three million, they would cut losses by one and a half billion dollars. They've still lost money, but not nearly as much.
Of course Sony likes to push the number of units shipped usually so perhaps they have sold six million PS3 consoles, at least to retail outlets. Of course if the number of sales by the retail outlets it low, they won't buy any more units from Sony. At some point, Sony gets stuck with extra consoles that they haven't sold.
This is the reason why anyone who says to buy a console selling for a loss to put Microsoft or Sony out of business is an idiot.
Don't worry, they'll just pass it on to Joe Consumer at some point.
It's also disfavors smaller banks in small towns where $50,000 isn't quite the pocket change it is for larger banks with branches all across the country or world.
And as others have pointed out, it's still not going to keep everyone from being fooled. Scammers are just going to keep finding new and more interesting ways of fooling people.
"What if somebody sent them a csv file and needs to recieve a csv file back? What if the csv file will be input to some other application? The user and Excel aren't just in a vacuum where Excel can use whatever format it likes."
I said to save a copy in.xls in addition to saving the csv. Hell it wouldn't be a bad idea to keep a copy of the original either in case you mess it up badly. No where did I say default to saving it only in the.xls format.
"Except when a dummy asks me for help and the whole UI is different because I'm not a dummy. Or they need to do something and the option simply isn't there. Or they need to do something in non-dummy mode and never turn it off and then get confused. Or they just think they're not a dummy, although they actually are."
Did I say that it should change the UI? No, I just pointed out that it could incorporate features such as saving a copy in an.xls format if you entered forumulas and the like. You're assuming too much.
If there was a dummy mode, the vast majority of users would be completely oblivious to it. You don't even have to call it "dummy mode" if you don't want to be so insulting. Call it an advanced feature that will automatically create an save in.xls in addition to anything else you save it in if you were to add forumals or anything else that wouldn't be supported in another format. Set it to on by default. I said it wasn't necessarily the best design choice, but it would save some user headaches. Either the program has to treat them like an idiot or someone has to tell them that they're not as smart as they think they are later when they complain about it.
Slashdot Mirror
So what's changed in the last twenty years to make Nintendo "not hardcore" all of a sudden? They had Mario, Zelda, and Metroid back on the NES and they've still got Mario, Zelda, and Metroid on the Wii. Anything that Nintendo didn't make was a third party game and Nintendo doesn't have a lot of control over what third parties want to make on the Wii. Maybe it's not Nintendo that has gotten less hardcore, but all of the third parties that have.
It's pretty obvious that Nintendo is catering to their core with new showings from all the favorite franchises established over the years. However, either Nintendo was never hardcore and it's ridiculous to assume they should be now, or Nintendo has been and still is hardcore and everyone just needs to stop whining about it.
If the Wii doesn't interest you, don't buy any games for it. My only question to you is, what kinds of games are you actually interested in playing? I think Nintendo has done a pretty good job covering most areas at the present and in the coming months.
Thanks for the Monkey Ball tip, though. I haven't seen it in stores so either it's been sold out and I just assumed it wasn't out yet or the stores haven't been carrying it, which seems odd. Then again I haven't looked for any new Wii games for a few months now since I've been getting a lot of old games from the VC.
"As I said before, it doesn't matter what's "fair" or "unfair". Were you complaining about Sony's year lead with the PS3, over the Xbox and GameCube? And again, even though the 360 had a year lead over the Wii, we see that Nintendo looks like they'll be able to catch up easily."
What happened last generation really isn't relevant to this discussion and I haven't brought it up. I never said the year head start was unfair, only that the PS3 is selling the same number of units globaly as the Xbox 360 thus far.
"According to that graph, the Wii is beating the pants off both the PS3 and 360. The 360, however, is also beating the PS3 by a not-insignificant margin, and has been for several months now."
A margin which hasn't changed, thus the whole bit about the same pace. If that margin were growing wider then your argumetns would be a lot more credible, but since it isn't you can't say that the PS3 will do better or worse for a certainty. It's mostly just baseless speculation.
I'm really tired of this argument. If people want to complain about the lack of hardcore games now and that Nintendo has abandoned the core, where were they last generation? As far as I can tell, we're getting the same Zelda, Mario, and Metroid that were were last generation. These may have slightly different appeals, but they're still great games for gamers. If you don't think these games are hardcore, then what would you define as hardcore? If these games don't fit that bill, then Nintendo didn't have anything for you last generation for the most part and abandoned you long ago.
I think once Super Smash Bros. and a Monkey Ball game manage to come out they'll be fine in my eyes. Both of these games could be considered fairly casual, but my friends and I played them relentlessly when we were back in high school. We'd have ten hour Monkey Ball or Smash Bros. sessions down in my friends basement, trading off the controller for single player aspects of the game or going heads up in multiplayer, trying to break each others records or square off for bragging rights. You can even play Wii Sports pretty hardcore as a few of my friends and I found out over last Thanksgiving when I brought my new Wii home and we ended up playing Wii boxing for almost four hours straight. Even my friend's dad got involved and had a hell of a time.
They reason they spent so much time on Wii Fit is because it's completely new and hasn't really be done before. They want to make sure that it gets good press coverage and that people are aware of it. They want to give something new to the casual gamers who really haven't had much since Wii Sports. You can't build up this great system for the more casual gamers and then leave them out in the cold. With Mario Kart, Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime: Corruption, and Super Smash Bros. all coming out within the next six months or so, I'd say they've got their core pretty well covered.
If for whatever reason you consider hardcore gaming to by violent or mature rated games (in which case I think you're an idiot) then there's plenty of fun to be had with The Godfather: Blackhand Edition, Resident Evil 4, and Manhunt 2 as well as the new Resident Evil game when they come out. I'm pretty sure that there will eventually be plenty of shooters and other such games on the console as well. It's only been out for abouth eight months now, give it some time.
I think the problem is that most people tend to think of themselves as hardcore gamers when it's convenient for them to say so. I'd wager that a majority of the people who claim that they are, really aren't. Just remember that because you play a lot of video games doesn't necessarily make you hardcore. Did you explore Twilight Princess without a guide to get all of the extra items? Do you do speed runs through the original Super Mario Bros. in order to see who could get the best time? Have you played a game competitively at a tournament? If you don't answer yes to questions like that, I don't consider you hardcore. You just spend too much time playing video games. Get over yourself.
So until someone can come up with a legitimate reason to suggest that Nintendo has abandoned their core or stopped caring about hardcore gamers, I think you're all just a bunch of whiny bitches looking for something to piss and moan about. Either Nintendo never was hardcore and stopped catering to their core ages ago or you're completely off base and full of crap. Maybe some of you are under the delusion that you're in Nintendo's core when you really aren't. I just think it's a load of crap no matter how you slice it.
The original Fable received a lot of hype and was the major driving factor in getting me to purchase an Xbox, but after playing it I was horribly disappointed. It was an alright game on its own, but the massive amount of hype and the fact that for every cool thing you could do in the game there were at least two more that you thought you should be able to do, but couldn't, managed to leave a sour taste in my mouth.
I like second chances though and with more powerful hardware, the Xbox 360 might help bring some of the missing features in the first game to the sequel. The only problems I'm seeing so far is that Molyneux seems to be making grand claims again and I'm wondering if they'll pan out or I'll just be left disappointed again. It's nice to hear that the game is looking good, but with the hardware capabilities of the Xbox 360 any game can look good if it wants to look good. He really needs to worry less about the looks and more about making sure there's plenty of feature rich gameplay. You can always spend the last few months touching up the graphics, but it's a real pain in the ass to make sure last minute feataure additions work smoothly.
I'm a little leery after the last go-around, but I'm still hopeful that Fable 2 shapes up into an excellent game. Maybe it will be the game that motivates me to go out and buy an Xbox 360.
The problem really isn't mapping where the sword should be or how it should move. Eventually someone will figure out a good way to make this possible and you'll be able to wave your Wiimote around and have the coresponding on-screen sword follow its motions very carefully. The real problem comes into play when you have another sword, or anything to deflect its blows added into the mix.
For example, I'm fighting an enemy with my sword and swing at him. He counters, meeting his blade with mine, causing both to bounce back from the force slightly or to slide against each other. However, my actual hand has met with no such resistance and has followed through as though my blade sliced through his sword, body, or anything else in the way as though it were nothing. On screen I'm locked sword to sword with my foe, but my hands suggest that I slashed through him. How is the mapping handled from here? Should the position that my hand ends up in be the new centered location for determining the swords next move, which would make further attacks awkward and unrealistic, or should the blade on the screen magically move to the position my hand suggests it's in, which doesn't make for a very realistic game.
The best idea I've ever heard for this solution is to have the controller respond with some type of feedback, a rumble, a sound, or something else, to notify the user that their blow was deflected. The user would then be unable to attack further until they managed to sync the remote position with their hand with what is displayed on the screen. Assuming the feedback is powerful enough and the player manages to learn to anticipate the deflection enough, eventually they will serve as their own feedback, stopping their swing as soon as they feel it has been deflected. To use the above example again, as soon as I were to feel a rumble from the Wiimote or hear two swords clashing, I would halt my downward motion and position the controller as though my blow had been met, allowing me to once again regrain control and continue with the battle.
While there are a lot of programing difficulties to be worked out, it still requires a lot of time for the player to become accustomed to the system and actually care to become familiar enough with it to enjoy playing the game. I don't forsee this as being something that casual players would be interested in taking the time to accomplish, and I'm not entirely sure if the hardware available now can offer all of the necessities in order for this to succeed.
I've simply presented one way of looking at it and why I think it's valid.
I think it's somewhat unfair that Sony should magically be able to catch up to Microsoft despite the year lead. Assuming that Sony had a better launch and sold out much like the Wii, people would probably spin things the other way and say that Microsoft is doomed because Sony is set to outpace them. If the sales trends continue, they'll be about even, the only difference is that Sony would be about a year behind Microsoft. If we were both running a race and I had an hour head start over you it doesn't necessarily make the most sense to compare our heads up relationship so early on in the race. If you're running only as fast as I am, I'll only finish the race an hour ahead of you, but if you're running at a different speed, the end results can change significantly. This early on it makes far more sense to compare the rate.
With E3 and all the new games previewed or mentioned, I think that some change is inevitable. I can't really say for sure exactly what that change is, but I'll just continue to moniter the sales results and draw my own conclusions.
The only problem is that 'doing fine' isn't 'doing great' which is where Sony wants to be right now. Dropping the console price could very well be a start to getting there, but they need more than just that. I made my original post because of the general amount of FUD that's being slung in Sony's direction. Even if the PS3 continues on a lackluster course, Sony won't be out of the console business anytime soon.
Funny that someone else read my post and decided to call me a Sony basher. I just call 'em like I see them.
Why does everyone seem to assume that if you have something nice to say about a company that you're obviously taking money from them to spread good news about the company?
Obviously the PS3 and PSP haven't done as well as Sony had hoped, which is why they've obviously cut the price on the PS3 so early in the consoles life cycle.
I've only been suggesting that they're not as doomed as everyone seems to think they are. There are a lot of people who seem to like to slam the PS3 just because it's made by Sony, the same company involved in the rootkit fiasco. The same goes almost double for Microsoft and a lot of the Xbox 360 hate that gets spread around on Slashdot and other sites like Digg. Just because I'm not joining in the two minutes hate like everyone else doesn't make me a shill.
And just yesterday I was called a Sony shill.
Do I think Sony will flop? No, I think that they'll do fine, but there's a pervasive belief in the media and a lot of people that the PS3 is doing horribly and is going to fail. It's almost contagous in that it's causing companies like Konami to debate the exclusivity of the MGS4 and has caused Sony to lose a lot of exclusives. It's a snowball effect, really.
The PS3 might many of the same games that made the PS2 so popular, but guess what, so does Microsoft this time around. Last time around the block GTA hit the PS2 first, now it's going to be on the 360 the exact same time. The only difference is that Microsoft will be seeing some exclusive content that the PS3 won't.
Go ahead and take a look at what happened to Nintendo. The Nintendo 64 had a lot of the games that made the SNES great and the GameCube had an arguably better array of games than the Nintendo 64, but they lost market share to the point that many people were questioning how long until they pulled out of the hardware business like Sega did. I thought this was a load as much as I think most of the current FUD against Sony is, but it's out there.
The industry can be pretty unforgiving. Just look at the gutted corpses that are Sega and Atari and it's not too unreasonable to suggest that if the market perceives them as a failure, they just might actually fail. Sony doesn't have to convince me that they'll do ok, but they do have to convince a lot of other people that they'll be around for the next generation.
I think it gives them some credibility when they talk about their ten year product cycle for the PS3. If the PS2 is still receiving new games and versions of games that aren't showing up on the previous generation consoles of their competitors they can point to this and how they stand behind their product. The fact that the PS2 is outselling all other consoles short of the Wii and still has content being developed for it is amazing considering that we're over a year into the next generation.
I think you're just muck racking and naysaying, trying to proclaim the death of Sony when you don't have anything of real substance. If you want to suggest that Sony is failing at least offer something more than a shot at the success and continued viability of the PS2 as a platform.
I think that this year's E3 was exactly what Sony needed last year. Overall I think they showed off plenty of eye candy and a few exclusives that should help to drive sales in the coming months. The only problem is that many of these key games (MGS4 in particular) won't be coming until after the holiday season. A lot of the media and public opinion is that Sony is failing and a big holiday season for them would help to dispell some of those doubts.
What I liked most about their conference is that they focused on showcasing the games coming out on their system instead of talking about sales figures and statistics (After watching the first fifteen minutes of the Nintendo conference, I was about ready for a nap). I suppose most of that stems from not having a lot of good news on that front. I don't mind a little bit of business, but I'm really more interested in seeing the games.
Depending on how things turn out over the next few months and other games that Sony manages to add to the PS3, I might almost consider buying one now that they've dropped the price a little bit. Hopefully I'll get to learn a little more about some of the games being released before the holidays to see if it's worth purchasing one of them. It also seems as though they've done a lot to revitalize the PSP, which is also a lot more appealing.
Overall I think that they should've given me a more compelling reason to puchase one of these during the holiday season or right now, but I think with the recent price drop and some of the good news from E3 that sales should pick up a little in the following weeks. If nothing else at least Sony has managed to pull its head out of its ass and get back on the right track. They still might end up like Nintendo during the GameCube era where they didn't receive a lot of support. They've still got a lot of leg work to prove to the rest of the world that they're a major contender.
Didn't get to watch it live since Gamespot was having some kind of issues with their live stream and I couldn't find another one for free. Guess I'll have to check on google video for it later. I did read through about five different live blogs to get a good feel for the presentation though and overall I think they did alright.
I would have liked to see more focus on some of the third party exclusives that were being brought to the Wii, something that seems a little lacking. I know that a lot of companies have pledged support and are releasing games, but a lot of them turn out to be crappy ports that no one's interested in. They probably should have shown something from Square Enix in more detail.
I'm glad that Mario Galaxy and Smash Bros. are dated now and it'll be nice to finally have some AAA games coming out. Hopefully, I'll be able to stand the wait between now and then. Announcing Mario Kart for 1Q 2008 also helps to let everyone know that there won't be another gaming drought, at least not for a while. Hopefully there will be some good AAA third party releases by then to start picking up the slack.
I'm glad they made some announcements about expanding online play in games on the system, but I still want to know more about it and how all of it will work. I'm not a huge fan of friends codes and would prefer that they used a set-up more akin to Xbox Live. At least they're finally catching up to Sony and Microsoft in terms of online play.
The Balance Board and their new light gun look like some interesting additions. I can see how the light gun adaptor would help to break down some of the barriers between casual and hardcore gamers. I also suspect that WiiFit will do a lot better than most people will give it credit for.
I'm going to go see if I can find a stream for the Sony conference now.
After watching their press conference I'm a little mixed about it. I liked the fact that they didn't bother talking too much about what's coming out far off in 2008, but talked about what we could be expecting to see in time for the holidays. It's interesting to see what's in the pipes, but I liked that they highlighted the games showing up in the near future. I also think they did a good job pointing out some of the exclusives that they were going to have as well or what kind of exclusive features (GTA IV downloadable content) that would only be showing up on the Xbox 360.
I think that their efforts in terms of family games was a little on the week side. I can understand they want to get into the same marketspace as the Wii, but it seems as though it's an afterthought for them. I think that their initial core market is mature gamers who enjoy FPS games and such. The Scene It game just seemed kind of awkward for a console. I think the majority of Xbox 360 owners don't really care too much about these games. I would have rather seen more focus on their core.
I really could care less about their Live for Windows information as well, but I've never been much of a computer gamer. I've always liked E3 for the focus on the consoles.
One thing that really stuck out, and this always seems to happen at pretty much every conference, is that some celebrity or designer comes out to highlight a game and they come off sounding stiff and awkward. The lady talking during the Assassins Creed preview made me cringe. The Madden demo also felt forced. Please reherse or find some more genuine presenters. It makes everything look more professional. Last year Sony was horrible for this reason.
Overall, not a bad showing, but it didn't feel as though they were trying to generate a lot of buzz. Maybe that's just an effect of the new format of E3 though. Looking forward to both of the press conferences tomorrow and what Sony and Nintendo have in the works.
I don't know what people think I'm a troll or some kind of Sony shill. I really have no love for either specific company, but as I pointed out, I feel that Sony is catching too much crap. As I pointed out in my initial post, their early sales trend follows closely to the Xbox 360 and that you can't really call the Xbox 360 a huge success and the PS3 a collosal flop in the same breath. It just doesn't make sense to me to say that.
Someone made a post earlier pointing out that this comparison was unfair because the 360 had supply problems that limited early sales. I simply pointed out that by the time people could easily walk into a store and see Xbox 360's on store shelves to buy them, they weren't doing so at any rate faster than what they were doing when there was a shortage. I was more or less suggesting that they'd reached a saturation in the rate that they could sell the consoles. If they hadn't, you would see an increase in their sales rate, which we haven't except around the holiday season, which is normal for many products. Otherwise the rate of sales hasn't changed much at all and probably won't until the holiday seasons or a killer app for the system is released that results in increased sales.
Similarly, the PS3 reached a similar state at its old price, but now that they've dropped the price, it's possible that their rate of sales will increase.
What I fail to see is why you have some problem admitting to the fact that the PS3 is selling just as well as the Xbox 360 did at launch. I don't own either of these consoles and don't plan on owning either of them any time soon for various reasons. I do own a Wii, but am mostly waiting for new games to come out for it. I owned each console from the previous generation (Dreamcast included) and will eventually own all of the consoles from this generation.
My view is that the PS3 is doing just fine and that everyone has spent so much time decrying it as a failure that they're actually starting to believe it. Look at the numbers and see for yourself that the PS3 is on track globally to sell the same number of units in the same time frame that the Xbox 360 has done. If you don't like my analysis that's your own business, but you can't look at those numbers and suggest that the PS3 is somehow doing worse. If you want to do that, point out the game library or lack of online functionality. Use something that might actually be valid.
The price cut is also a new thing. The fact that people have responded so positively to the price cut in such a short time could suggest an increase in sales and a spike in the rate of sales, which would be good news for Sony. Only time will tell how much of an impact this will have, but right now it's impossible to either affirm this as a major turnabout for Sony or dismiss it as a quick jump in sales.
My assumption clearly states that as long as the demand outpaces the supply, any new consoles introduced to the market will be immediately purchased (read stories about how Wii's are still flying off shelves as an example). However, it's been known that there have been Xbox 360's on store shelves in the wild now for some time. I think that by early summer you could easily walk into a store and pick one up. The fact that there were there extra consoles available for puchase that weren't, suggests that the Xbox 360 reached a point of saturation in the market. If it hadn't, there wouldn't have been consoles on store shelves. The pace of the sales has been fairly similar with the exception of the holiday season when purchases spiked and have since returned to a similar rate before the holidays. We can't ever know for a certainty that if Microsoft hadn't had supply issues, that their sales would have been greater. Even assuming that they were, the long run results would still likely be the same.
I think that if you use your method of comparison, it makes Sony look even better. Then you can point out that they're compeating with an established compititor that has similar graphical capabilities, a superior online implementation, a larger library of games, and costs only two-thirds as much. The fact that the PS3 can compete with that while trying to ramp up support is a small miracle. It makes an even stronger case that Sony isn't in the trouble that everyone seems to be suggesting they are.
If you look at the current sales growth, you'll see that globally, the PS3 and the Xbox 360 are roughly even currently, and have similarities in their launches.
Look at the sales rate on that graph. If your statement were entirely true, then as soon as more supply became available, the Xbox 360 would have seen a large spike in sales, but the sales trend continues at the same pace until the Christmas season when you see the sharp increase. I imagine that Sony will experience something like this with the PS3 and then fall back to normal, as did the Xbox 360.
There are plenty of Xbox 360's out in the wild right now that are sitting on shelves and Microsoft had to decrease their shipment target from 15 million down to 12 million by the start of July, 2007. I think that they've found out that despite the initial clamour, that the consoles that they released within the first five months were enough to saturate the market for that time period. Had they managed to release more I don't think that the end results would be very different than they are now.
The only difference is that Sony overestimated their sales and produced more than they could sell, requiring them to slow production or find a way to move more units to keep up with their production. Considering that like Microsoft, Sony has a number of other divisions in the company that can support the gaming division, they can just bleed money on the PS3 and worry about making it back later.
I'm going to keep watching the sales charts and we'll see if there are any major changes in the coming months. For now it's a close race though.
On another interesting note, while messing around I noticed that according to those charts the Gamecube has actually sold more units than the original Xbox. That may suggest Microsoft came in third in the last generation. Then again second place is largely meaningless when the first place company pushed over twice as many units as the second and third place companies combined.
I think people really like to rag on the PS3 for not being vary successful, but it seems to me that it's not doing terribly bad. If you look at sales numbers and align the launches of the PS3 and the Xbox 360, the PS3 is more or less on the same track that the Xbox 360 was on.
If you check Amazon you can see that the PS3 moved up to the number one selling item in the video game section. I think it was substantially lower (If I recall correctly it was 28th) before this from what I've been reading on other sites.
With E3 and the possibilities of some big ticket games being shown, It's possible for Sony to pick up even more steam. They've done a lot to shoot themselves in the foot, but I think they can still make a decent showing this round. Right now it's outpacing the Gamecube and the original Xbox, both of which were wonderful systems with great exclusives. I think Sony is given a lot more crap than they deserve.
I don't think it's as bad as you make it out to be. In your own post you point out that if people are not at the show, they'll be just as able to watch some of the content or read about it on the internet. In fact, there was a lot of things at previous E3's that weren't shown to the public and the press weren't allowed to talk openly about. I'd read some of the reports released about which games were going to be making the biggest splashes and some of the journalists would drop names that I'd never heard of because they weren't out on the floor open to the general public to blog about.
With a drastic decrease in the number of non-journalists and small bloggers, I think that reporting will actually be better. Instead of having to wait four hours in line to get a hands on impression of Wii games, journalists might only have to wait an hour, giving them more time to look into other games and products, increasing the total amount of reporting that they can do. For me this results in more total information being put out that I can gobble up.
I think that this actually might help out smaller publishers because after a journalist has seen all of the main attractions from the key players in the industry, they'll have some time to check out some of the other games at the show. If you don't need to wait several hours in line to get fifteen minutes of Mario Galaxy for a preview, perhaps you can check out what a small publisher is putting out and do some reporting on that as well. Just because there aren't throngs of casual gamers and people not as connected to the industry, doesn't mean that the media won't be able to spot interesting projects from new or small companies. Many of these journalists are also avid gamers of sorts with varying intrest.
I think that the Penny Arcade Expo does a much better job by being entirely for the gamer who doesn't have anything to do for the industry. The fact that some of the major companies in the gaming industry have decided to attend the event suggest that it can do a good job of emulating the part of E3 which will no long exist. E3 started out as a trade show for the press, drifted away from that, and is now trying to move back towards that. As I received all of my E3 information from the media over the internet or in gaming magazines, I can't really say that this is a bad thing.
Back in May there were articles floating around that Microsoft expected the Xbox division to be profitable in 2008. However, they've recently decided to offer an extended warrenty to customers in order to deal with the high failure rate of the Xbox 360. An earlier Slashdot article has this estimated to cost Microsoft around one billion dollars.
The earliest reports pegged the Xbox as costing about five hundred through seven hundred dollars to manufacture, a loss of a few hundred dollars on each console sold. This article published around the time of the PS3 launch puts the cost of Xbox 360 components at around seventy dollars under the final unit cost (manufacturing and other costs were not calculated into this figure so it may be safe to assume that they were breaking even or close to it at that time).
With the costs of the new warrenty (in addition to any costs that can be associated with the honoring existing warrenties to cover the high failure rates of the console) and cutting the price which changes the profitability on each unit sold, when does Microsoft now expect their Xbox division to become profitable?
Essentially what it means that as your character becomes progressively more powerful (obtains a higher level, better items, etc.) enemies also scale similarly. There are a few different RPGs that have implemented a system similar to this one. Final Fantasy VIII comes to mind and so does Lunar: Silver Star Story.
For the most part I think it's silly and leads to situations where that sewer rat you had to kill at the start of the game ends up being as powerful as the gigantic dragon that you have to slay near the end.
I've purchased more games over the years that I care to count and I've enjoyed most of the ones that I've purchased. For the most part, cost was never a big factor in purchasing games, but with the increased costs of games this most recent generation, I've been more leerly towards purchasing titles without doing a good amount of research into them first.
Similarly, I used to have a subscription to Xbox Live but haven't played on it in a very long while. It was a fairly good service in and of itself (most of the shortcomings deal more with the people who use it than with the technical details of the service) and not really all that bad of a deal for the roughly four dollars a month that it cost. At the time it was completely free of adertisements or anything else designed to get me to fork out more cash.
However, now that there seems to be a store selling virtuals goods and other things as well as increased advertisement both online and in the games themselves, will part of the money earned by the companies who produce these games and host the online system be used to offset some of the cost that I pay for these games and services? However, if I'm cruising around in my "Built Ford Tough" Warthog in Halo 3 and then looking over the stats in the post-match Pepsi rundown, I'd like to pay a little less than the full price. If you're going to subject me to crap advertising that I'd like to escape and expect to charge me just so that I can be subjected to it, I'm not going to spend $60 on your game or $50 on your online service.
"Newsweek reported that Take Two had wanted to continue its long-standing practice of giving Sony a lengthy timed exclusivity on the game, but they didn't want it. Newsweek says that former Sony Computer Entertainment president Ken Kutaragi's 'radio silence' on the issue left Sony's American execs without the authority to make deals, and nothing happened. Same with ... Assassin's Creed"
A lot of people have attributed some of the generally accepted poor decisions in the PS3's design to be Ken Kutaragi's doing, but I wasn't aware that he had anything to do with this. How can you not look at a game such as Grand Theft Auto IV and realize that it will be a major mover on consoles in the North American region. The sales numbers for the game during the PS2 generation were the best for any game on the console. Either he's incredibly stupid or was completly blinded by pride and assumed that consumers would flock to the new console regardless of whether or cost two dollars or two thousand and regardless of whether or not there were any good games on the platform.
I would have encouraged Take Two not only to release on the PS3 first, but to make the game big enough that it would need to span at least two DVD's, just to rub it in the face of anyone who said you didn't need Blu-Ray. Do you know how pissed off I would be if I had to switch DVDs ever time I drove to a certain part of the map? It doesn't matter if any exclusive they have eventually trickles out onto the Xbox 360, they just need something to create some buzz about and a set of good games that were designed for the PS3 first instead of lazily ported over after the fact.
What the hell was Ken thinking (or not thinking more likely) when all of this was going down?
Additionally, getting extra PS3's into the wild will increase the number of game sales which also increases profit for Sony. In addition to this, every PS3 out there is also a Blu-Ray player and helps move Sony a few steps closer to winning a format war that they've invested a lot of money in. If Blu-Ray wins out, people are more likely to start buying Blu-Ray players and Blu-Ray movies (both of which Sony sells) which will also generate some extra revenue for Sony.
There are probably a few more angles I haven't seen, but I think that covers most of it.
Imagine if you will, that Sony has produced six million PS3 consoles up to this point. If they have sold roughly half of those for six hundred dollars and lose two hundred on every sale, then they will have lost six hundred million on the consoles they have sold, but will have lost nearly two and a half billion dollars on the consoles that they haven't sold. If they were to drop the price of the console to five hundred dollars and sell the remaining three million, they would cut losses by one and a half billion dollars. They've still lost money, but not nearly as much.
Of course Sony likes to push the number of units shipped usually so perhaps they have sold six million PS3 consoles, at least to retail outlets. Of course if the number of sales by the retail outlets it low, they won't buy any more units from Sony. At some point, Sony gets stuck with extra consoles that they haven't sold.
This is the reason why anyone who says to buy a console selling for a loss to put Microsoft or Sony out of business is an idiot.
Don't worry, they'll just pass it on to Joe Consumer at some point.
It's also disfavors smaller banks in small towns where $50,000 isn't quite the pocket change it is for larger banks with branches all across the country or world.
And as others have pointed out, it's still not going to keep everyone from being fooled. Scammers are just going to keep finding new and more interesting ways of fooling people.
"What if somebody sent them a csv file and needs to recieve a csv file back? What if the csv file will be input to some other application? The user and Excel aren't just in a vacuum where Excel can use whatever format it likes."
.xls in addition to saving the csv. Hell it wouldn't be a bad idea to keep a copy of the original either in case you mess it up badly. No where did I say default to saving it only in the .xls format.
.xls format if you entered forumulas and the like. You're assuming too much.
.xls in addition to anything else you save it in if you were to add forumals or anything else that wouldn't be supported in another format. Set it to on by default. I said it wasn't necessarily the best design choice, but it would save some user headaches. Either the program has to treat them like an idiot or someone has to tell them that they're not as smart as they think they are later when they complain about it.
I said to save a copy in
"Except when a dummy asks me for help and the whole UI is different because I'm not a dummy. Or they need to do something and the option simply isn't there. Or they need to do something in non-dummy mode and never turn it off and then get confused. Or they just think they're not a dummy, although they actually are."
Did I say that it should change the UI? No, I just pointed out that it could incorporate features such as saving a copy in an
If there was a dummy mode, the vast majority of users would be completely oblivious to it. You don't even have to call it "dummy mode" if you don't want to be so insulting. Call it an advanced feature that will automatically create an save in