The ones that 'never make it out' are the ones that are tragically flawed and you don't want, anyhow. Too expensive, too cancer-causing, too impossible, etc.
On the other hand, if you don't want to know the cutting-edge tech that -might- come out soon, you are probably on the wrong site. Geeks tend to value new ideas, even if they are impractical.
He may be the only one calling it an unqualified failure, but he's not the only way to say it was horribly managed and very hard on the journalists.
Since the whole POINT of the show is now the journalists, shouldn't it have totally centered around them?
The big complaint: Everything was spread out. Every vendor had a different hotel, and the display hangar was 20-30 minutes away. There was -no- way to get to each conference on time, and people actually started to skip conferences that they didn't deem worthy of running for.
Several journalists also noted that you had to have an appointment to try a game and you were SOL otherwise. There was no chance to walk by a booth and suddenly find a great game that nobody else noticed yet. You HAD to know they existed, or at least that the company was worth talking to, beforehand.
The vendors loved the fact that they didn't have to move an inch, though some said "can't" instead of "don't have to".
All the vendors had a vastly scaled-down offering to show, and very few had anything that hadn't been already announced and releasing before year end.
Yes, E3 has successfully contracted their span and have very little to offer the gamers that wanted to hear news of their games. Unfortunately, the target audience (journalists) wanted exactly the same thing and also didn't get it.
So while it was not an 'unqualified failure', I think it still deserves the failure label.
I blame the 'mainstream news' for their sites failing. This isn't just web-based, but tv and radio as well. For years I've heard people complaining about the degrading usefulness of the news due to it's decreasing truthfulness and content.
When a random person on the net can provide more interesting and useful information than an entire channel dedicated to that concept, it's no wonder that they are failing.
On the other hand, there are blogs that have turned into news sites, such as Slashdot. Kotaku clearly thinks it's a news site, and Joystiq seems to as well, but they look an awful lot like blogs to me. So where do you draw the line? Do they have to be owned by a big media company to be called a 'news site', or is it enough to simply claim they are a news site? I would think the latter, really.
So the issue is not that the blogs are getting all the advertising, it's that the smaller news sites are getting it, and the big sites are trying to fight back by whining. Instead, they should work on being GOOD reporters, and giving us facts instead of spin. Maybe then we'd care what they have to say again.
I think you're confusing the feeling of fear with the logic of knowing not to do something.
When your friend comes up to you and says 'guaranteed 20% return' you don't get a fight or flight response. You get a rational, reasoned response. You simply say 'No.' Your friends offer doesn't elicit any fear from me whatsoever, except that I might lose a friend if I'm not gentle enough telling him what a fool he is.
On the other hand, fear is standing at the top of a tall building and looking over the edge. There's a rational part of you that says 'falling would be deadly' but there's a different part that is gibbering 'falling is really really bad, mmkay!?' With the feeling, you get a need, rational or not, to either fight or run. (For this, you could only run, as there's nothing to fight.)
Now let's take combat as an example. You're dressed in head-to-toe kevlar and just about nothing can hurt you. An enemy soldier points a gun at you. Your head says 'I can't be hurt from that.' but your feelings say 'gun! fight or run!' With pure logic and no fear, you'll probably choose to shoot. With fear, you will probably do the same, but quicker, as it doesn't require full logic from your brain.
Taking fear away -will- have an impact on general manners, though, as many people are afraid of what others will think, and have little logic behind their actions of than 'can't let the neighbors know!' They will tend to act more like all the other people that have no care what others think, like geeks. Rude or oblivious, that is. (Lord knows I've been there enough, myself.)
"Only people who seem do be able do do nothing useful themselves but feel entitled to control everyone else's usefulness are interested in politics."
I disagree. As with anything where power is involved, you get a lot of self-centered jerks that want the power to help themselves, and you get selfless saints that want the power to help everyone else, and you get get a whole slew in-between those extremes.
But thanks to our media, all we ever hear about are the jerks. If Senator X successfully improves the quality of the schools in State Y, while saving money, the media doesn't care. If Senator Z takes a bribe -at all, for any reason-, it's big news and everyone hears about it when its discovered.
The media thrives on negativity. If you get all your news from the media, you'll have a lot more negative than positive. Don't base your statistics on what you've seen on the evening news as it will be horribly skewed and unrealistic.
My current boss plans to eventually run for a local office because he believes he can make a difference at that level. He's not a saint, I'm sure, but at least his plan includes the intention of helping, instead of just getting power.
I'm not making excuses for Senator "Tubes", but I seriously doubt he started out corrupt. Likely he just couldn't resist the lure of free home upgrades/etc. He probably even told himself he would accept the money, but not change a thing about how he votes. Anyone who's been through that knows it's impossible, of course. If you're a 'good' person, there's always some portion of your mind thinking about the briber, and how to return the favor. If you're a 'bad' person, then you're thinking about how to make the briber happy, so they'll bribe you again. It will skew your perceptions and thinking, even if you've the best of intentions.
Agreed, even though some of the newer 'match 3' games are pretty doggone good, and worth checking out. "Puzzle Quest" (psp/ds) is addictive to me, and "Burger Rush" (pc) totally snared my mother and sister, and they've played Bejeweled to death.
My point (which wasn't very well stated) was that the clones should be ignored, when looking for innovation. They only cloud the issue. The fact that there are 100 beweled clones on every game site you visit doesn't take away the fact that Bejeweled was indeed an innovative game when it was released. (If not Bejeweled, then whatever the first of its genre was. It's the first I saw.)
I have yet to see an Alchemy clone, though I've seen some that combine Bejeweled and Alchemy lately.
Do we -know- C is a reason? I would think it's backwards, actually. Here's my reasoning:
Emotion hardware is only 'on' when using PS2 games, and the PS3 hardware is fairly idle at that point. Emulating another hardware take more CPU than the original hardware needed, and thus produces more heat.
So at best, it's the same heat while playing PS3 games, and more when playing PS2.
In the end, I don't think the extra backwards-compatibility will matter. I think the number right now is 90% for the emulation, and that's pretty doggone good. Sony will be able to patch later (just like MS does) and gain ground on that, if they want.
As a side note, I recently learned that MS finally (in April) got backwards-compat for one of my favorite games on the XBox, Phantom Dust. I had pretty much given up on it. I had to order a copy off EBay ($12!) as I can't find mine, though... Oh well.
Oh, and anyone that's seriously considering the 80GB PS3 should snag a 60GB one and http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8 2E16822136071 and have twice the hard drive space. I've got a 20GB that I got dirt cheap and if that drive wasn't most of what I paid for the PS3, I'd have already bought one and upgraded.;) ($250 for a PS3 and $120 worth of accessory/game/guide.)
How do you figure that? The 20gb model hasn't existed almost since launch. The 'bar of entry' has been $600 for months. It'll be $600 again in August, once the 60gb models sell out. (Assuming Sony can actually sell them.)
Yeah, that's why the European PS3's are going down in price... Oh wait, they aren't.
As noted in the 'article', this is just a tactic to clear the old PS3's off the shelf while a new model of the same price is brought out. It would be extremely embarrassing to have 60gb PS3's on the shelf next year, with the better 80gb one selling like crazy. They want them gone.
So why the same price? Because they cost Sony the same price (or less). They dropped the PS2 hardware from inside and added a few GB HD space and a game.
They aren't going to drop a game that costs them almost nothing at this point (marginal cost blah blah) and drop the price $100. Don't forget that Nintendo usually includes a game with their consoles as well, and they're less than half the price.
Star Wars is somewhat of an exception, but the re-released works are all modified, and wouldn't that mean copyright for -that version- for the next 14 years? The original version could very well be watched/distributed/copied for free, but the enhanced version would still be owned by the originator.
I totally agree with your assessment of why it doesn't matter the initial movie cost if there's 14 years to recoup costs and profit. (2 years is more than enough for the majority of movies, really.)
Music tends to have a little longer lifespan, of course.
The GP noted that anyone could promote the 'new movie' 14 years later with the old scenes... Sure, they could, but they'd get better response to their campaign if they could use the new changes to the movie in their promotion. There would be no profit in releasing the same film in 14 years, so they'd have to enhance it or add new footage, or something.
Someone else also noted that trademarks are a different thing entirely, and Disney's characters would still be protected. This applies to Star Wars as well, and McDonald's could not give away Jar Jar Binks toys in 14 years without licensing them. (Unless they gave away 14 yr old toys, possibly... That'd go well.)
I was using the box to transcode video to watch TV in the living room. I noticed the reduced performance, but thought it was just Windows being stupid again. I wasn't far off, I guess.
If anyone knows a good (video) transcoding DLNA server for Linux, I'm looking. TVersity is pretty doggone good... But... Windows. -sigh- Had to host it on my gaming PC and I'd rather have it on my 'server'. I've tried gmediaserver, fuppes and mediatomb, but I could find none that transcode video on Linux. (Fuppes was by far the best of the 3, for those that care, and can transcode audio, but not video.)
Indeed, and for people affected by the law, I heartily reccommend they act on the public comment period that was referenced in the article. For the rest of us...
Like me, I doubt most of the people responding to this have little to no knowledge of Japanese law and government. Is the $3.50 the only tax they pay on their phones? The article sure makes it sound that way, but I have no idea.
My point is that everyone is getting indignant about a proposal in a society they know nothing about that proposes a tax of an unspecified amount on unspecified devices. The only thing we -do- know is that the proposal doesn't do what they said it would when it was proposed. All other speculation is pretty much pointless for outsiders.
Yeah, but's -not- a mugger, is it? It's the government. Maybe they don't have a -whole- lot of choice about their government in Japan, but here in the US we -do- and we end up with just as many (and probably more) bullshit taxes and regulations.
As (rudely) noted by the other responder, it's a yearly fee, not monthly, for Japan.
Why is it any different than any other regulated service? If we want the government to regulate something, we have to give them money to be able to do it. $3.50 a year seems awful low to regulate the cellphone industry, if you ask me. But then, maybe they aren't such assholes over there, and don't have to slapped back into line so often.
Over here (in the US), the money for that comes from other taxes. If corner drug dealer has 5 cellphones, and I only have 1, why shouldn't he pay more taxes? And the neighbor down the road that has no cellphone... Why should he sponsor regulation of my luxury item?
At any rate, let's be clear on this: The taxes WILL be collected. They may not specifically say 'this is a cellphone tax' but the money WILL come from the tax payer.
Taxes for road repair come (at least partially) from gasoline. Taxes for helping smokers get medical care for lung cancer come from... Cigarettes, now, but there was a time they didn't. The burden was correctly moved to those who choose to smoke, knowing the risks. (If my mother can quit, anyone can.)
Why should cellphones be any different?
The problem here is not the tax, but the law that goes with it. It doesn't do what it's designed to, and has adverse effects on those unrelated to the problem.
I love how all Slashdot articles have massive amounts of spin on them now.
This is a -proposal-, not a law, not even something someone has said 'I want this to happen'. They are looking into ways to control "illegal" radio stations.
It's quite obvious to anyone that even glances at it that it not only won't stop things that are already illegal, but that it will adversely affect many people it wasn't intended to.
BTW, that 420 yen yearly tax per mobile phone is about $3.50 US. -yawn- As if we don't already spend a hell of a lot more than that in the US. (Hint: It's on your cellphone bill every month.)
While I had no interest in Assassin's Creed to start with, I agree about your attitude about demos. Any major (ie: hyped/marketed) game that can't be bothered to put out a demo is probably not worth buying.
Most of the smaller games like Katamari Damacy and Shadow of the Colossus don't get a demo and and great games, but that has more to do with budget and manpower. They don't have the money to make the hype-engine work, and they dont' have the money for a demo.
I'm guessing someone will say that demos don't really sell games, and I'm proof against that. Both Prey and Overlord were games that I had very little interest in, and tried the demo only because there was hype. Prey I rented (and I'm still considering buying) and Overlord I bought. There have been others, but those are recent.
As for reviews... They're SO hard to believe any more. Fansites like GameFAQs tend to have reviews from either fanboys or haters with very few balanced reviews, and the major gaming sites are all paid off, whether or not they even admit it to themselves. To make it worse, the gaming sites generally just stick someone on the game regardless of their playstyle, and most of the games I love get reviewed by someone who doesn't even like the genre.
In the end, I end up finding the negative reviews and deciding if the things they hate will make me hate the game as well. If the complaints are trivial, and not one of my pet peeves (ie: Transformers, the robots 'run too slow') then I get the game anyhow. (They don't run too slow, anyhow. I'm not sure why they wanted robots to run at insane speeds by default. That's what vehicle mode is for.)
Zuma? Bejeweled? Diner Dash? Oh heck, here... http://reflexive.net/ Yes, there's a ton of copycats, but there's also a -lot- of innovative games on there in the last few years. A HECK of a lot more than all other genres combined. (There are other sites as well, but Reflexive tends to have the best sampling of any single site.)
Wait, why would they wait until after the showed aired and rip a lossy video stream when they could (and already do) simply record the live broadcast and post that?
DRM has -never- stopped determined people, only delayed them a bit. This is no different. The only thing DRM does stop is the average joe. And that only until some enterprising hacker makes a name for himself by publishing the crack.
In this case, the only people being stopped are the few non-Brits that want to watch British TV and don't know what a torrent is.
You don't kill the cash cow. They'd have been better to have changed E3's direction to be more what the public wanted (while saving money for the Big 3), and have another show that did what the industry wanted.
No matter what MS/Sony/Nintendo say, they're lying if they say E3 wasn't worth the money. They aren't idiots, and they simply wouldn't have spent it if that were the case.
I don't see why E3 had to cost SO much money for the companies involved. GIVE them the floorspace they want, they can buy the stuff to put IN that space, and then charge the consumers that want to go see it to make up the money necessary. Not close enough to money season? Reschedule it.
If E3 is just for journalists/industry-insiders, why do those same people count the number of big screens each company has? Surely the size/count of their screen(s) has -nothing- do with the worth of their product. E3 is -still- simply an advertising medium. I'm betting the very same companies that wanted it smaller now have to pay the 'saved' money out in other forms of advertising instead, just to drum up a portion of the hype they could have had at E3. The thing about marketing is that it's pretty hard to know how 'ineffective' it really is. E3 is famous for displaying amazing demos that have been drooling for -years- about the product, often when it doesn't warrant it. It's hard to get that loyal fanboyism without the huge show.
So E3 causes some disturbance in schedules... So what! Christmas does, too, and we've never trimmed that back to a 'proper' scale.
I don't expect them to change. Tecmo noted that the previous organisers were jerks, and the new ones had no idea what they were doing. If they listened at all, they wouldn't have such a bad reputation.
I'm not questioning the initial purpose, but I am going to question the destruction of a highly-successful business.
E3 filled a niche so well that the entire world was taking note. Instead of running with their fame, they decide to gimp themselves and return to their roots.
This is actually not the first time something like this has happened!
When I was young, there was a yearly food expo in Tampa. (I think it was in Tampa.) We used to go every year and check out all the booths and get the free goodies. This often included free food samples, such as tiny (like 2") loaves of bread from Wonder and such. 1 year, they decided that the pesky customers (who paid admission!) were in the way and they didn't let us in. Guess where that expo is now? It's non-existant. Turns out the vendors found it an excellent way to promote their product to customers, instead of trying to promote it to the middle man, and get the middle man to promote it to customers.
That's what E3 was. Gamers all over the world worked themselves into a frenzy each year about each and every game announced at E3. Even the dumb games that were way overhyped saw fanboys for their products.
This year, none of that. The closest a consumer can get is a video feed via XB-live/PS-network or some bad-grammar blogger on a game news site. Many stated their intention not to participate beforehand, and all the ones that -did- participate only announced games that will release very soon.
Did anyone learn anything from any of the conferences? MGS4 - might be PS3 exclusive... Yeah, we knew that. We got a more solid release date on Mario Galaxy. They could have announced that without a major conference. The Wii is getting a fitness game... -yawn-
Just because you succeed in executing your battle strategy does not mean you will win the war. Any decent tactician will tell you that plans never go right, and you must constantly adapt. E3 is attempting to stick to the original plan and it's killing them.
Look at it another way: Many great inventions were an accident to the actual product being developed. If they'd said 'that isn't what we were aiming at' and discarded it, it would have been extremely stupid.
Sure, E3 is welcome to do whatever they want with their expo... But that won't stop everyone from telling them how stupid they are.
That wouldn't be innovation then, would it? It would be improving a current concept, instead of innovating.
The WiiMote isn't innovation, either, as the Powerglove and Zapper before it did everything it does. They merely improved on a concept they had made long ago.
Whoa! Slow down there, pal. I work for a small company and have the job the poster is looking for. 2 of the 3 of us here (we're all developers that do what's needed in all areas, but myself more so than the other 2) were found on Monster, and the third was found by 1 of us on a meeting site.
I had actually stopped looking on Monster because I wasn't getting any replies. To appease the career counsellor at the college I graduated from (I was getting desperate!) I finally went back and used all the jobs sites again. Monster was on my 'least likely' list, and yet it's the one that I found the job on.
Granted, when I applied for the job, it wasn't a 'jack of all trades' position. It was merely developing. But as the load grew and the 'sysadmin' (system/db/network/etc) couldn't keep up, I helped. Eventually he quit and I took over his responsibilities as well as mine. I get huge raises every year and love my job, and the companies is more than happy not to have had to replace the sysadmin directly.
My point: Odd jobs like this don't follow rules. You can't say 'you'll not find one there'.
As for my advice for the poster: If you can't find what you want immediately (and I think you're past that point), you should take a job as 1 of the things you want to be, and work on impressing the company with your skillset. The job may grow into what you want, instead of existing from the start.
Hey, I love innovative games as much as the next guy, but true innovation does -not- happen all that often. It would basically mean an entirely new genre, because otherwise everyone will just say 'That's just an RTS mixed with an MMO' and say there was no innovation.
I challenge you to come up with a game concept that is truly innovative. I sure as hell can't do it.
When the technology didn't exist to realize certain genres, it was a lot easier to come up with ideas for new games. Now, we have far more power than we need and that's not holding us back anymore. Nintendo tends to innovate with hardware instead. Powerglove, zapper, etc. There's not much of that left either, though. (I'd love to see a return of the powerglove for the Wii, but that's not innovation.)
Puzzle games still have innovations happening, but they don't appeal to nearly as many guys as the non-puzzle (action) games do. (Yes, I know women and old people have started gaming.) I like puzzle games, but if given the choice between an good RPG and a good puzzle game, I'll almost always pick the RPG.
So again, name an innovation that would appeal to the 'typical gamer'.
I used to heartily believe that Global Warming was a problem. I no longer believe so.
Is the global climate getting warmer? Absolutely. That's been proven.
Is it unnatural? I don't think so, anymore. We've been on a heating trend for longer than we've been pumping out poisons into our atmosphere. Could it be making it worse? It's possible, but it's not enough that anyone can prove it yet.
But back to the point: I still think we should reduce air polution. Even with no sign of a global warming problem, it -cannot- be good to breathe the smog in the majority of our major cities, let alone all the other problems caused directly and indirectly.
Has it been rated yet? It would be quite interesting if this were rated AO.
What is the real difference between playing a game that has the sole purpose of killing a bunch of people a game that has the sole purpose of killing a bunch of people in a different country? Someone recently joked that Manhunt should have stated that the people were terrorists, and they'd have been okay on rating.
For my money, a game that attempts to realistically recreate the experience of war -should- be Adult Only, as real adults don't even fair all that well for the real experience. (Mental trauma is almost unavoidable when taking someone's life.)
It's too bad the ESRB doesn't have to stated exactly why they chose the rating they did, because we'd soon know if they chose AO out of spite or because it genuinely warranted it.
Slashdot Mirror
The ones that 'never make it out' are the ones that are tragically flawed and you don't want, anyhow. Too expensive, too cancer-causing, too impossible, etc.
On the other hand, if you don't want to know the cutting-edge tech that -might- come out soon, you are probably on the wrong site. Geeks tend to value new ideas, even if they are impractical.
He may be the only one calling it an unqualified failure, but he's not the only way to say it was horribly managed and very hard on the journalists.
Since the whole POINT of the show is now the journalists, shouldn't it have totally centered around them?
The big complaint: Everything was spread out. Every vendor had a different hotel, and the display hangar was 20-30 minutes away. There was -no- way to get to each conference on time, and people actually started to skip conferences that they didn't deem worthy of running for.
Several journalists also noted that you had to have an appointment to try a game and you were SOL otherwise. There was no chance to walk by a booth and suddenly find a great game that nobody else noticed yet. You HAD to know they existed, or at least that the company was worth talking to, beforehand.
The vendors loved the fact that they didn't have to move an inch, though some said "can't" instead of "don't have to".
All the vendors had a vastly scaled-down offering to show, and very few had anything that hadn't been already announced and releasing before year end.
Yes, E3 has successfully contracted their span and have very little to offer the gamers that wanted to hear news of their games. Unfortunately, the target audience (journalists) wanted exactly the same thing and also didn't get it.
So while it was not an 'unqualified failure', I think it still deserves the failure label.
I blame the 'mainstream news' for their sites failing. This isn't just web-based, but tv and radio as well. For years I've heard people complaining about the degrading usefulness of the news due to it's decreasing truthfulness and content.
When a random person on the net can provide more interesting and useful information than an entire channel dedicated to that concept, it's no wonder that they are failing.
On the other hand, there are blogs that have turned into news sites, such as Slashdot. Kotaku clearly thinks it's a news site, and Joystiq seems to as well, but they look an awful lot like blogs to me. So where do you draw the line? Do they have to be owned by a big media company to be called a 'news site', or is it enough to simply claim they are a news site? I would think the latter, really.
So the issue is not that the blogs are getting all the advertising, it's that the smaller news sites are getting it, and the big sites are trying to fight back by whining. Instead, they should work on being GOOD reporters, and giving us facts instead of spin. Maybe then we'd care what they have to say again.
I think you're confusing the feeling of fear with the logic of knowing not to do something.
When your friend comes up to you and says 'guaranteed 20% return' you don't get a fight or flight response. You get a rational, reasoned response. You simply say 'No.' Your friends offer doesn't elicit any fear from me whatsoever, except that I might lose a friend if I'm not gentle enough telling him what a fool he is.
On the other hand, fear is standing at the top of a tall building and looking over the edge. There's a rational part of you that says 'falling would be deadly' but there's a different part that is gibbering 'falling is really really bad, mmkay!?' With the feeling, you get a need, rational or not, to either fight or run. (For this, you could only run, as there's nothing to fight.)
Now let's take combat as an example. You're dressed in head-to-toe kevlar and just about nothing can hurt you. An enemy soldier points a gun at you. Your head says 'I can't be hurt from that.' but your feelings say 'gun! fight or run!' With pure logic and no fear, you'll probably choose to shoot. With fear, you will probably do the same, but quicker, as it doesn't require full logic from your brain.
Taking fear away -will- have an impact on general manners, though, as many people are afraid of what others will think, and have little logic behind their actions of than 'can't let the neighbors know!' They will tend to act more like all the other people that have no care what others think, like geeks. Rude or oblivious, that is. (Lord knows I've been there enough, myself.)
"Only people who seem do be able do do nothing useful themselves but feel entitled to control everyone else's usefulness are interested in politics."
I disagree. As with anything where power is involved, you get a lot of self-centered jerks that want the power to help themselves, and you get selfless saints that want the power to help everyone else, and you get get a whole slew in-between those extremes.
But thanks to our media, all we ever hear about are the jerks. If Senator X successfully improves the quality of the schools in State Y, while saving money, the media doesn't care. If Senator Z takes a bribe -at all, for any reason-, it's big news and everyone hears about it when its discovered.
The media thrives on negativity. If you get all your news from the media, you'll have a lot more negative than positive. Don't base your statistics on what you've seen on the evening news as it will be horribly skewed and unrealistic.
My current boss plans to eventually run for a local office because he believes he can make a difference at that level. He's not a saint, I'm sure, but at least his plan includes the intention of helping, instead of just getting power.
I'm not making excuses for Senator "Tubes", but I seriously doubt he started out corrupt. Likely he just couldn't resist the lure of free home upgrades/etc. He probably even told himself he would accept the money, but not change a thing about how he votes. Anyone who's been through that knows it's impossible, of course. If you're a 'good' person, there's always some portion of your mind thinking about the briber, and how to return the favor. If you're a 'bad' person, then you're thinking about how to make the briber happy, so they'll bribe you again. It will skew your perceptions and thinking, even if you've the best of intentions.
Agreed, even though some of the newer 'match 3' games are pretty doggone good, and worth checking out. "Puzzle Quest" (psp/ds) is addictive to me, and "Burger Rush" (pc) totally snared my mother and sister, and they've played Bejeweled to death.
My point (which wasn't very well stated) was that the clones should be ignored, when looking for innovation. They only cloud the issue. The fact that there are 100 beweled clones on every game site you visit doesn't take away the fact that Bejeweled was indeed an innovative game when it was released. (If not Bejeweled, then whatever the first of its genre was. It's the first I saw.)
I have yet to see an Alchemy clone, though I've seen some that combine Bejeweled and Alchemy lately.
Haha, well that rather proves my point about not knowing their political situation, doesn't it?
Thanks for correcting me. (And no, I'm not being sarcastic. I don't enjoy ignorance.)
Do we -know- C is a reason? I would think it's backwards, actually. Here's my reasoning:
8 2E16822136071 and have twice the hard drive space. I've got a 20GB that I got dirt cheap and if that drive wasn't most of what I paid for the PS3, I'd have already bought one and upgraded. ;) ($250 for a PS3 and $120 worth of accessory/game/guide.)
Emotion hardware is only 'on' when using PS2 games, and the PS3 hardware is fairly idle at that point.
Emulating another hardware take more CPU than the original hardware needed, and thus produces more heat.
So at best, it's the same heat while playing PS3 games, and more when playing PS2.
In the end, I don't think the extra backwards-compatibility will matter. I think the number right now is 90% for the emulation, and that's pretty doggone good. Sony will be able to patch later (just like MS does) and gain ground on that, if they want.
As a side note, I recently learned that MS finally (in April) got backwards-compat for one of my favorite games on the XBox, Phantom Dust. I had pretty much given up on it. I had to order a copy off EBay ($12!) as I can't find mine, though... Oh well.
Oh, and anyone that's seriously considering the 80GB PS3 should snag a 60GB one and http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N
How do you figure that? The 20gb model hasn't existed almost since launch. The 'bar of entry' has been $600 for months. It'll be $600 again in August, once the 60gb models sell out. (Assuming Sony can actually sell them.)
Yeah, that's why the European PS3's are going down in price... Oh wait, they aren't.
As noted in the 'article', this is just a tactic to clear the old PS3's off the shelf while a new model of the same price is brought out. It would be extremely embarrassing to have 60gb PS3's on the shelf next year, with the better 80gb one selling like crazy. They want them gone.
So why the same price? Because they cost Sony the same price (or less). They dropped the PS2 hardware from inside and added a few GB HD space and a game.
They aren't going to drop a game that costs them almost nothing at this point (marginal cost blah blah) and drop the price $100. Don't forget that Nintendo usually includes a game with their consoles as well, and they're less than half the price.
Star Wars is somewhat of an exception, but the re-released works are all modified, and wouldn't that mean copyright for -that version- for the next 14 years? The original version could very well be watched/distributed/copied for free, but the enhanced version would still be owned by the originator.
I totally agree with your assessment of why it doesn't matter the initial movie cost if there's 14 years to recoup costs and profit. (2 years is more than enough for the majority of movies, really.)
Music tends to have a little longer lifespan, of course.
The GP noted that anyone could promote the 'new movie' 14 years later with the old scenes... Sure, they could, but they'd get better response to their campaign if they could use the new changes to the movie in their promotion. There would be no profit in releasing the same film in 14 years, so they'd have to enhance it or add new footage, or something.
Someone else also noted that trademarks are a different thing entirely, and Disney's characters would still be protected. This applies to Star Wars as well, and McDonald's could not give away Jar Jar Binks toys in 14 years without licensing them. (Unless they gave away 14 yr old toys, possibly... That'd go well.)
I was using the box to transcode video to watch TV in the living room. I noticed the reduced performance, but thought it was just Windows being stupid again. I wasn't far off, I guess.
If anyone knows a good (video) transcoding DLNA server for Linux, I'm looking. TVersity is pretty doggone good... But... Windows. -sigh- Had to host it on my gaming PC and I'd rather have it on my 'server'. I've tried gmediaserver, fuppes and mediatomb, but I could find none that transcode video on Linux. (Fuppes was by far the best of the 3, for those that care, and can transcode audio, but not video.)
Indeed, and for people affected by the law, I heartily reccommend they act on the public comment period that was referenced in the article. For the rest of us...
Like me, I doubt most of the people responding to this have little to no knowledge of Japanese law and government. Is the $3.50 the only tax they pay on their phones? The article sure makes it sound that way, but I have no idea.
My point is that everyone is getting indignant about a proposal in a society they know nothing about that proposes a tax of an unspecified amount on unspecified devices. The only thing we -do- know is that the proposal doesn't do what they said it would when it was proposed. All other speculation is pretty much pointless for outsiders.
Yeah, but's -not- a mugger, is it? It's the government. Maybe they don't have a -whole- lot of choice about their government in Japan, but here in the US we -do- and we end up with just as many (and probably more) bullshit taxes and regulations.
As (rudely) noted by the other responder, it's a yearly fee, not monthly, for Japan.
Why is it any different than any other regulated service? If we want the government to regulate something, we have to give them money to be able to do it. $3.50 a year seems awful low to regulate the cellphone industry, if you ask me. But then, maybe they aren't such assholes over there, and don't have to slapped back into line so often.
Over here (in the US), the money for that comes from other taxes. If corner drug dealer has 5 cellphones, and I only have 1, why shouldn't he pay more taxes? And the neighbor down the road that has no cellphone... Why should he sponsor regulation of my luxury item?
At any rate, let's be clear on this: The taxes WILL be collected. They may not specifically say 'this is a cellphone tax' but the money WILL come from the tax payer.
Taxes for road repair come (at least partially) from gasoline.
Taxes for helping smokers get medical care for lung cancer come from... Cigarettes, now, but there was a time they didn't. The burden was correctly moved to those who choose to smoke, knowing the risks. (If my mother can quit, anyone can.)
Why should cellphones be any different?
The problem here is not the tax, but the law that goes with it. It doesn't do what it's designed to, and has adverse effects on those unrelated to the problem.
I love how all Slashdot articles have massive amounts of spin on them now.
This is a -proposal-, not a law, not even something someone has said 'I want this to happen'. They are looking into ways to control "illegal" radio stations.
It's quite obvious to anyone that even glances at it that it not only won't stop things that are already illegal, but that it will adversely affect many people it wasn't intended to.
BTW, that 420 yen yearly tax per mobile phone is about $3.50 US. -yawn- As if we don't already spend a hell of a lot more than that in the US. (Hint: It's on your cellphone bill every month.)
While I had no interest in Assassin's Creed to start with, I agree about your attitude about demos. Any major (ie: hyped/marketed) game that can't be bothered to put out a demo is probably not worth buying.
Most of the smaller games like Katamari Damacy and Shadow of the Colossus don't get a demo and and great games, but that has more to do with budget and manpower. They don't have the money to make the hype-engine work, and they dont' have the money for a demo.
I'm guessing someone will say that demos don't really sell games, and I'm proof against that. Both Prey and Overlord were games that I had very little interest in, and tried the demo only because there was hype. Prey I rented (and I'm still considering buying) and Overlord I bought. There have been others, but those are recent.
As for reviews... They're SO hard to believe any more. Fansites like GameFAQs tend to have reviews from either fanboys or haters with very few balanced reviews, and the major gaming sites are all paid off, whether or not they even admit it to themselves. To make it worse, the gaming sites generally just stick someone on the game regardless of their playstyle, and most of the games I love get reviewed by someone who doesn't even like the genre.
In the end, I end up finding the negative reviews and deciding if the things they hate will make me hate the game as well. If the complaints are trivial, and not one of my pet peeves (ie: Transformers, the robots 'run too slow') then I get the game anyhow. (They don't run too slow, anyhow. I'm not sure why they wanted robots to run at insane speeds by default. That's what vehicle mode is for.)
It's called 'Earth', come back to it.
Zuma? Bejeweled? Diner Dash? Oh heck, here... http://reflexive.net/ Yes, there's a ton of copycats, but there's also a -lot- of innovative games on there in the last few years. A HECK of a lot more than all other genres combined. (There are other sites as well, but Reflexive tends to have the best sampling of any single site.)
Wait, why would they wait until after the showed aired and rip a lossy video stream when they could (and already do) simply record the live broadcast and post that?
DRM has -never- stopped determined people, only delayed them a bit. This is no different. The only thing DRM does stop is the average joe. And that only until some enterprising hacker makes a name for himself by publishing the crack.
In this case, the only people being stopped are the few non-Brits that want to watch British TV and don't know what a torrent is.
You don't kill the cash cow. They'd have been better to have changed E3's direction to be more what the public wanted (while saving money for the Big 3), and have another show that did what the industry wanted.
No matter what MS/Sony/Nintendo say, they're lying if they say E3 wasn't worth the money. They aren't idiots, and they simply wouldn't have spent it if that were the case.
I don't see why E3 had to cost SO much money for the companies involved. GIVE them the floorspace they want, they can buy the stuff to put IN that space, and then charge the consumers that want to go see it to make up the money necessary. Not close enough to money season? Reschedule it.
If E3 is just for journalists/industry-insiders, why do those same people count the number of big screens each company has? Surely the size/count of their screen(s) has -nothing- do with the worth of their product. E3 is -still- simply an advertising medium. I'm betting the very same companies that wanted it smaller now have to pay the 'saved' money out in other forms of advertising instead, just to drum up a portion of the hype they could have had at E3. The thing about marketing is that it's pretty hard to know how 'ineffective' it really is. E3 is famous for displaying amazing demos that have been drooling for -years- about the product, often when it doesn't warrant it. It's hard to get that loyal fanboyism without the huge show.
So E3 causes some disturbance in schedules... So what! Christmas does, too, and we've never trimmed that back to a 'proper' scale.
I don't expect them to change. Tecmo noted that the previous organisers were jerks, and the new ones had no idea what they were doing. If they listened at all, they wouldn't have such a bad reputation.
I'm not questioning the initial purpose, but I am going to question the destruction of a highly-successful business.
E3 filled a niche so well that the entire world was taking note. Instead of running with their fame, they decide to gimp themselves and return to their roots.
This is actually not the first time something like this has happened!
When I was young, there was a yearly food expo in Tampa. (I think it was in Tampa.) We used to go every year and check out all the booths and get the free goodies. This often included free food samples, such as tiny (like 2") loaves of bread from Wonder and such. 1 year, they decided that the pesky customers (who paid admission!) were in the way and they didn't let us in. Guess where that expo is now? It's non-existant. Turns out the vendors found it an excellent way to promote their product to customers, instead of trying to promote it to the middle man, and get the middle man to promote it to customers.
That's what E3 was. Gamers all over the world worked themselves into a frenzy each year about each and every game announced at E3. Even the dumb games that were way overhyped saw fanboys for their products.
This year, none of that. The closest a consumer can get is a video feed via XB-live/PS-network or some bad-grammar blogger on a game news site. Many stated their intention not to participate beforehand, and all the ones that -did- participate only announced games that will release very soon.
Did anyone learn anything from any of the conferences? MGS4 - might be PS3 exclusive... Yeah, we knew that. We got a more solid release date on Mario Galaxy. They could have announced that without a major conference. The Wii is getting a fitness game... -yawn-
Just because you succeed in executing your battle strategy does not mean you will win the war. Any decent tactician will tell you that plans never go right, and you must constantly adapt. E3 is attempting to stick to the original plan and it's killing them.
Look at it another way: Many great inventions were an accident to the actual product being developed. If they'd said 'that isn't what we were aiming at' and discarded it, it would have been extremely stupid.
Sure, E3 is welcome to do whatever they want with their expo... But that won't stop everyone from telling them how stupid they are.
That wouldn't be innovation then, would it? It would be improving a current concept, instead of innovating.
The WiiMote isn't innovation, either, as the Powerglove and Zapper before it did everything it does. They merely improved on a concept they had made long ago.
Whoa! Slow down there, pal. I work for a small company and have the job the poster is looking for. 2 of the 3 of us here (we're all developers that do what's needed in all areas, but myself more so than the other 2) were found on Monster, and the third was found by 1 of us on a meeting site.
I had actually stopped looking on Monster because I wasn't getting any replies. To appease the career counsellor at the college I graduated from (I was getting desperate!) I finally went back and used all the jobs sites again. Monster was on my 'least likely' list, and yet it's the one that I found the job on.
Granted, when I applied for the job, it wasn't a 'jack of all trades' position. It was merely developing. But as the load grew and the 'sysadmin' (system/db/network/etc) couldn't keep up, I helped. Eventually he quit and I took over his responsibilities as well as mine. I get huge raises every year and love my job, and the companies is more than happy not to have had to replace the sysadmin directly.
My point: Odd jobs like this don't follow rules. You can't say 'you'll not find one there'.
As for my advice for the poster: If you can't find what you want immediately (and I think you're past that point), you should take a job as 1 of the things you want to be, and work on impressing the company with your skillset. The job may grow into what you want, instead of existing from the start.
Hey, I love innovative games as much as the next guy, but true innovation does -not- happen all that often. It would basically mean an entirely new genre, because otherwise everyone will just say 'That's just an RTS mixed with an MMO' and say there was no innovation.
I challenge you to come up with a game concept that is truly innovative. I sure as hell can't do it.
When the technology didn't exist to realize certain genres, it was a lot easier to come up with ideas for new games. Now, we have far more power than we need and that's not holding us back anymore. Nintendo tends to innovate with hardware instead. Powerglove, zapper, etc. There's not much of that left either, though. (I'd love to see a return of the powerglove for the Wii, but that's not innovation.)
Puzzle games still have innovations happening, but they don't appeal to nearly as many guys as the non-puzzle (action) games do. (Yes, I know women and old people have started gaming.) I like puzzle games, but if given the choice between an good RPG and a good puzzle game, I'll almost always pick the RPG.
So again, name an innovation that would appeal to the 'typical gamer'.
I agree.
I used to heartily believe that Global Warming was a problem. I no longer believe so.
Is the global climate getting warmer? Absolutely. That's been proven.
Is it unnatural? I don't think so, anymore. We've been on a heating trend for longer than we've been pumping out poisons into our atmosphere. Could it be making it worse? It's possible, but it's not enough that anyone can prove it yet.
But back to the point: I still think we should reduce air polution. Even with no sign of a global warming problem, it -cannot- be good to breathe the smog in the majority of our major cities, let alone all the other problems caused directly and indirectly.
Has it been rated yet? It would be quite interesting if this were rated AO.
What is the real difference between playing a game that has the sole purpose of killing a bunch of people a game that has the sole purpose of killing a bunch of people in a different country? Someone recently joked that Manhunt should have stated that the people were terrorists, and they'd have been okay on rating.
For my money, a game that attempts to realistically recreate the experience of war -should- be Adult Only, as real adults don't even fair all that well for the real experience. (Mental trauma is almost unavoidable when taking someone's life.)
It's too bad the ESRB doesn't have to stated exactly why they chose the rating they did, because we'd soon know if they chose AO out of spite or because it genuinely warranted it.