From what I can tell, it is merely legalities. Different countries have different software import laws. Gametap is launching in the UK soon, and has just launched in Canada. They are feeling a LOT of pressure from the Sam & Max and Uru Live (Myst Online) communities. They already have plans to sell JUST Uru Live to Europe for the same price as a Gametap account, and once they have launched in Europe, that subscription will also include the rest of Gametap.
I subscribed when they were having the half-off sale. I love it. There's a ton of old games that I miss on there. There's even more crap, of course, but then, some of what I call crap, my friend Tito drools over.
In addition, each account can have up to 8 logins, and any 2 of those logins can be on at once... So my european friend and I both get to play, even though he couldn't buy an account himself. I almost bought him an account on my card (they allow multiple accounts per credit card) but then I found that loophole.
I disagree with some of what they've done... The Interactive Fiction stuff runs really poorly. (Zork, etc) The backspace key doesn't delete characters, so you HAVE to type it exactly right or it'll be garbled. And some games don't use a joypad properly.
But for $5/month... I'm more than happy. When Uru Live is launched, I'm going to be ecstatic.
TFA/S says nothing about Sony expected low turn-out. It says everything about component shortages, though. They aren't shipping fewer because they won't sell, they just can't make them fast enough, even with all the bad press lately.
I'm not a music person, so I don't really follow music stuff.
But there are MANY games that produce a soundtrack at the same time as the game now. Phantasy Star Universe came with a soundtrack as pre-order from EB. Peter Gabriel has been featured on a few games recently. And I'm sure there are other US-based artists in that position. There are even games (Guitar Hero, DDR) that the entire point of the game is the music.
And as for GTA... Music is game music if it's in the game. Just because it's not used for a particular cutscene doesn't mean it doesn't give atmosphere to the game. It just happens that the player has more control over the atmosphere. And if I remember right, the type of car dictated what kind of music was playing when you first enterred it... Also atmosphere.
The highest score was 84,000, not long ago, I believe. The 360 does not require region DRM. Quite a few games play on foreign consoles, and the people over the 66 game limit will have played games from other regions.
It is. I figure this guy overheard some office talk something like this:
Bob: So, me and Patty were going through "software patents" on the internet in my office. Joe: They say it makes up 90% of the web conversations. Bob: Tell me about it. Patty and I have tons of material left to look at. Not that her own assets aren't something to like at, eh?
And being the total freak that he is, didn't catch the drift.
I was into MTG for as long as it took to realize that my friends were more willing to spend 100's of $ on cards than I was. I then quickly realized that only if I was willing to spend as much money/time/effort as them would I ever have decks that compete. So I quit before I was more than a few booster packs in.
From that realization, it became pretty clear to me that SOME company would exploit this. Apparently Upper Deck was the one. And why? Because they provided what people want, regardless of whether they actually care about the customer or not.
I hate this. I wish people were willing to spend a little more money on companies that care, rather than whoever provides what they want cheapest. But that's economics for you.
And by the time a company has grown to UD's marketshare, it's a juggernaut and can't be stopped without legal intervention, because it produces the products people want, and nobody else has the money to anymore.
Yes, UD are money-grubbing bastards... But it's because the people let them be.
"all (the consumers) will pay in the end. Sony will increase the cost of the batteries they produce"
Only if 'the consumers' buy Sony batteries. They managed to sell so many because they were very cheap and had a name brand behind them. To make them no-explode, they'll have to be more expensive and won't be able to compete as well. So yeah, we'll probably pay more, but that's because we're getting better quality goods.
Seriously, if you WANT batteries that explode, Sony has a ton to get rid of right now. Really really cheap. Otherwise you get to pay more than previously.
This is exactly what I was going to post. Where's mod points when you really really need them? (Maybe if they lasted more than a couple days, I could save them for posts that really deserve them.)
Might be true IF I played WoW, or worked for the company. I just see a lot of FUD and feel the need to fight it. Screaming 'FIRE!' when you see a whisp of smoke is FUD.
The article makes a huge assumption: That the cards are the ONLY way to get UDE points. Maybe this is just the first way. Maybe you can also earn them by grinding, in-game. Or winning contests. Or special quests. Or other WoW merchandise.
Or maybe they just placed an extra 0 on all the stuff online by accident.
Or maybe they really are just greedy bastards and know how to exploit the playerbase of the most popular game in the world.
Or maybe, just maybe... They meant it to be REALLY FSCKING TOUGH to get those. They aren't special if everyone has one.
I see the definition of Democracy has been stretched to fit the US. What you describe is actually a Republic.
In a democracy, the people ARE the government, and so they would both be correct. In a republic, the government is doing the law making, and the decisions for it. You may have elected them, but that's not the same as making the decisions.
I'll grant you that for 'secure', but that's not what non-transferrable means. Ever.
It could mean 'not capable of being transferred at all' or 'can't transfer legal ownership'. Since they obviously want the purchaser to get the song after they pay for it, the first isn't correct in regards to the original download URL. And since the second is true with or without DRM, if the agreement says so at purchase, it's not that. (They can transfer it illegally, but not change the legal ownership.) No, they mean you can't transfer from 1 person to another, which would require DRM.
While I agree that it is technically 'intellectual assets', the real value is in the services they provide.
My father is a retired industrial engineer. He now does odd jobs fixing houses, etc. Hi assets are entirely intellectual, if you look at it the same way. The real value is the service he provides... Work done cheap, right, and quick. He can perform those services thanks to the years and years of experience and knowledge that he has.
I see Google in the same light. If they had all this info, and no service to provide us with it, we wouldn't care about them. And if they have the service, but no info to back it up, ditto.
It's not the same 'intellectual assets' that SCO and SGI have, and they're definitely not using them the same way.
I think there's no doubt to any reasonable person that Google has worked hard for their money.
Probably? More like by a gajillion %! I just finally hit 11MB today. Yippee!
By contrast, their photos section gives 250MB, and I've used 2MB already in MUCH less time than the 11MB on GMail. If they REALLY had 2.7GB for each user, I could use some of that for my photos.
Fortunately, despite the jargon, you actually said something. Hehe.
These not only help the company, but the band, too. If they make the same $/song at X as they do at Y, and Y has these added features... Why not take advantage of them? At worst, they sell the same number of songs, since their traffic comes from external sources to the site. More likely, they'll sell more songs and gain more fans.
Also to the OP, this 'secure and nontransferable' bit... That IS DRM. Period. Nobody likes DRM. If you like your fans, considering dropping this. IT WILL NOT STOP THEM FROM PIRATING YOUR MUSIC. It will only piss them off. In fact, do the opposite. Make a loud public announcement about how much you hate DRM and your music will not be restricted by it, ever. You'll thank me for it later.
Please don't comment on posts in which you have no interest.
You see what I did there? He DOES have an interest in it. He has an interest in stopping future stories like it that also have absolutely nothing to do with Slashdot. Just the same as you had an interest in stopping him from posting about them.
Yeah, but the way Wii does it is smooth, where I can't see how the PS3 is going to be smooth like that.
It's obvious how to hold the Wiimote to make it act like a golf club. But how to hold the sixaxis? This is just a dual-shock-shaped controller. Do I hold it by one of the 2 handles and hope I don't accidentally let it go, since I can't really get my hand all the way around it? Do I have to let go of it completely and then re-grip it in the middle? Do I hold it like normal, where the flexibility of the human body prevents free range of movement?
Football... I can see some use there, but still not as much as the Wiimote/nunchuk. The new football for Wii excites even me, and I -hate- football games.
Swords? You mean, like, twist it to swing the sword? My hands don't do that. If you mean move it side to side... that's a bit complicated, when you consider you also have 2 analog sticks and several buttons to deal with at the same time. Nowhere NEAR as much fun or as smooth as the Wiimote.
Oddly, guns are the one thing I COULD possibly see as working. Since you hold the controller in front of you anyhow, the sixaxis could easily be used to control the sight of a gun onscreen. The Wiimote allows gun games without the sight onscreen, though... And I prefer it that way.
I admit I'm a bit hyped about Nintendo for the first time in many years. And it's currently en vogue to hate Sony, especially considering they just killed one of my favorite online stores. But I cannot logically find how the sixaxis is even close to comparing to the Wiimote.
I totally agree with trying the demo, and that they aren't substantial enough a lot of times. If I'm unsure about a console game, I rent it from GameFly, and if I'm unsure about a PC game, I try a "demo". I've actually bought quite a few games after "demo"ing them, but there's been quite a few more than I deleted after an hour and thought "Holy crap, I'm glad I didn't buy that."
I've been bit on buying games just too many times. I bought PSU today, knowing that it'd just be PSO with a little extra, and it is. Pretty safe buy. As I'm leaving, the manager says 'See you next week for FF12.'... I turned around and said 'I pre-ordered that?'... I had. Lord knows what lack of sanity prompted that, but I did. Definitely meant to rent that one first. Ah well, sell back price will probably be pretty good.
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From what I can tell, it is merely legalities. Different countries have different software import laws. Gametap is launching in the UK soon, and has just launched in Canada. They are feeling a LOT of pressure from the Sam & Max and Uru Live (Myst Online) communities. They already have plans to sell JUST Uru Live to Europe for the same price as a Gametap account, and once they have launched in Europe, that subscription will also include the rest of Gametap. I subscribed when they were having the half-off sale. I love it. There's a ton of old games that I miss on there. There's even more crap, of course, but then, some of what I call crap, my friend Tito drools over. In addition, each account can have up to 8 logins, and any 2 of those logins can be on at once... So my european friend and I both get to play, even though he couldn't buy an account himself. I almost bought him an account on my card (they allow multiple accounts per credit card) but then I found that loophole. I disagree with some of what they've done... The Interactive Fiction stuff runs really poorly. (Zork, etc) The backspace key doesn't delete characters, so you HAVE to type it exactly right or it'll be garbled. And some games don't use a joypad properly. But for $5/month... I'm more than happy. When Uru Live is launched, I'm going to be ecstatic.
Ah, thank for that. It makes a lot more sense that way, and with their grammar being different than ours, it probably sounds pleasing to them.
That's the English translation of it. I suspect the slogan was developed there, in their current culture, and sounds weird to us because of it.
TFA/S says nothing about Sony expected low turn-out. It says everything about component shortages, though. They aren't shipping fewer because they won't sell, they just can't make them fast enough, even with all the bad press lately.
I'm not a music person, so I don't really follow music stuff.
But there are MANY games that produce a soundtrack at the same time as the game now. Phantasy Star Universe came with a soundtrack as pre-order from EB. Peter Gabriel has been featured on a few games recently. And I'm sure there are other US-based artists in that position. There are even games (Guitar Hero, DDR) that the entire point of the game is the music.
And as for GTA... Music is game music if it's in the game. Just because it's not used for a particular cutscene doesn't mean it doesn't give atmosphere to the game. It just happens that the player has more control over the atmosphere. And if I remember right, the type of car dictated what kind of music was playing when you first enterred it... Also atmosphere.
Or Spanish either, apparently.
The highest score was 84,000, not long ago, I believe. The 360 does not require region DRM. Quite a few games play on foreign consoles, and the people over the 66 game limit will have played games from other regions.
It is. I figure this guy overheard some office talk something like this:
Bob: So, me and Patty were going through "software patents" on the internet in my office.
Joe: They say it makes up 90% of the web conversations.
Bob: Tell me about it. Patty and I have tons of material left to look at. Not that her own assets aren't something to like at, eh?
And being the total freak that he is, didn't catch the drift.
I was into MTG for as long as it took to realize that my friends were more willing to spend 100's of $ on cards than I was. I then quickly realized that only if I was willing to spend as much money/time/effort as them would I ever have decks that compete. So I quit before I was more than a few booster packs in.
From that realization, it became pretty clear to me that SOME company would exploit this. Apparently Upper Deck was the one. And why? Because they provided what people want, regardless of whether they actually care about the customer or not.
I hate this. I wish people were willing to spend a little more money on companies that care, rather than whoever provides what they want cheapest. But that's economics for you.
And by the time a company has grown to UD's marketshare, it's a juggernaut and can't be stopped without legal intervention, because it produces the products people want, and nobody else has the money to anymore.
Yes, UD are money-grubbing bastards... But it's because the people let them be.
"all (the consumers) will pay in the end. Sony will increase the cost of the batteries they produce"
Only if 'the consumers' buy Sony batteries. They managed to sell so many because they were very cheap and had a name brand behind them. To make them no-explode, they'll have to be more expensive and won't be able to compete as well. So yeah, we'll probably pay more, but that's because we're getting better quality goods.
Seriously, if you WANT batteries that explode, Sony has a ton to get rid of right now. Really really cheap. Otherwise you get to pay more than previously.
This is exactly what I was going to post. Where's mod points when you really really need them? (Maybe if they lasted more than a couple days, I could save them for posts that really deserve them.)
Maybe they didn't want you to buy the cards just to get the in-game items? It's supposed to be a bonus, not the reason.
I suspect if you went to them and offered them 1/10th of that price for the item, and only the item, they'd quickly open up a shop and sell it to you.
Do I think it sounds amazingly stupid as the system stands? Absolutely. I just don't believe this is the end of the system, only the beginning.
Might be true IF I played WoW, or worked for the company. I just see a lot of FUD and feel the need to fight it. Screaming 'FIRE!' when you see a whisp of smoke is FUD.
The article makes a huge assumption: That the cards are the ONLY way to get UDE points. Maybe this is just the first way. Maybe you can also earn them by grinding, in-game. Or winning contests. Or special quests. Or other WoW merchandise.
Or maybe they just placed an extra 0 on all the stuff online by accident.
Or maybe they really are just greedy bastards and know how to exploit the playerbase of the most popular game in the world.
Or maybe, just maybe... They meant it to be REALLY FSCKING TOUGH to get those. They aren't special if everyone has one.
Yes, and that's why I said that we stretched the definition of Democracy.
I see the definition of Democracy has been stretched to fit the US. What you describe is actually a Republic.
c racy
b lic
In a democracy, the people ARE the government, and so they would both be correct. In a republic, the government is doing the law making, and the decisions for it. You may have elected them, but that's not the same as making the decisions.
http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?gwp=13&s=demo
http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?gwp=13&s=repu
Obviously not, as many others read it like I did.
"Nothing for you to see here. Please move along."
Hmm, political landscape... Nothing to see... Yeah, that's about right.
I'll grant you that for 'secure', but that's not what non-transferrable means. Ever.
It could mean 'not capable of being transferred at all' or 'can't transfer legal ownership'. Since they obviously want the purchaser to get the song after they pay for it, the first isn't correct in regards to the original download URL. And since the second is true with or without DRM, if the agreement says so at purchase, it's not that. (They can transfer it illegally, but not change the legal ownership.) No, they mean you can't transfer from 1 person to another, which would require DRM.
While I agree that it is technically 'intellectual assets', the real value is in the services they provide.
My father is a retired industrial engineer. He now does odd jobs fixing houses, etc. Hi assets are entirely intellectual, if you look at it the same way. The real value is the service he provides... Work done cheap, right, and quick. He can perform those services thanks to the years and years of experience and knowledge that he has.
I see Google in the same light. If they had all this info, and no service to provide us with it, we wouldn't care about them. And if they have the service, but no info to back it up, ditto.
It's not the same 'intellectual assets' that SCO and SGI have, and they're definitely not using them the same way.
I think there's no doubt to any reasonable person that Google has worked hard for their money.
Probably? More like by a gajillion %! I just finally hit 11MB today. Yippee!
By contrast, their photos section gives 250MB, and I've used 2MB already in MUCH less time than the 11MB on GMail. If they REALLY had 2.7GB for each user, I could use some of that for my photos.
Fortunately, despite the jargon, you actually said something. Hehe.
These not only help the company, but the band, too. If they make the same $/song at X as they do at Y, and Y has these added features... Why not take advantage of them? At worst, they sell the same number of songs, since their traffic comes from external sources to the site. More likely, they'll sell more songs and gain more fans.
Also to the OP, this 'secure and nontransferable' bit... That IS DRM. Period. Nobody likes DRM. If you like your fans, considering dropping this. IT WILL NOT STOP THEM FROM PIRATING YOUR MUSIC. It will only piss them off. In fact, do the opposite. Make a loud public announcement about how much you hate DRM and your music will not be restricted by it, ever. You'll thank me for it later.
Please don't comment on posts in which you have no interest.
You see what I did there? He DOES have an interest in it. He has an interest in stopping future stories like it that also have absolutely nothing to do with Slashdot. Just the same as you had an interest in stopping him from posting about them.
Yeah, but the way Wii does it is smooth, where I can't see how the PS3 is going to be smooth like that.
It's obvious how to hold the Wiimote to make it act like a golf club. But how to hold the sixaxis? This is just a dual-shock-shaped controller. Do I hold it by one of the 2 handles and hope I don't accidentally let it go, since I can't really get my hand all the way around it? Do I have to let go of it completely and then re-grip it in the middle? Do I hold it like normal, where the flexibility of the human body prevents free range of movement?
Football... I can see some use there, but still not as much as the Wiimote/nunchuk. The new football for Wii excites even me, and I -hate- football games.
Swords? You mean, like, twist it to swing the sword? My hands don't do that. If you mean move it side to side... that's a bit complicated, when you consider you also have 2 analog sticks and several buttons to deal with at the same time. Nowhere NEAR as much fun or as smooth as the Wiimote.
Oddly, guns are the one thing I COULD possibly see as working. Since you hold the controller in front of you anyhow, the sixaxis could easily be used to control the sight of a gun onscreen. The Wiimote allows gun games without the sight onscreen, though... And I prefer it that way.
I admit I'm a bit hyped about Nintendo for the first time in many years. And it's currently en vogue to hate Sony, especially considering they just killed one of my favorite online stores. But I cannot logically find how the sixaxis is even close to comparing to the Wiimote.
I totally agree with trying the demo, and that they aren't substantial enough a lot of times. If I'm unsure about a console game, I rent it from GameFly, and if I'm unsure about a PC game, I try a "demo". I've actually bought quite a few games after "demo"ing them, but there's been quite a few more than I deleted after an hour and thought "Holy crap, I'm glad I didn't buy that."
... I turned around and said 'I pre-ordered that?' ... I had. Lord knows what lack of sanity prompted that, but I did. Definitely meant to rent that one first. Ah well, sell back price will probably be pretty good.
I've been bit on buying games just too many times. I bought PSU today, knowing that it'd just be PSO with a little extra, and it is. Pretty safe buy. As I'm leaving, the manager says 'See you next week for FF12.'