Doesn't make a lot of sense these days as I can usually walk into my local supermarket and pick up new launches with no hassle.
Pre-orders are popular with retailers for the same reason gift cards are: it's money in the bank. Even better than gift cards, pre-orders show concrete data on which particular products are going to be popular or sell well.
All I want in a music/media player is the ability to get the documentation for the hardware, with no NDA or other legal nonsense attached. This way, it would be easy to write software that works for it and supports every format under the sun (perhaps even things like Flash). It would be easy for someone to port something like Rockbox to it as well.
Microsoft is very successful with hardware. They sell a lot of keyboards, mice, Xboxes and probably also mp3 players.
Um, right. Even though Microsoft has worked hard to obfuscate its unprofitable businesses, it's still rather clear that they are not making any money in the areas you claim here. For example, the Xbox alone has drained $4 billion from the war chest (through the end of 2005).
Disclaimer: I've never reserved a console before, so I'm going to assume your quote of $25 for pre-ordering is accurate.
you will now put down a good portion of the price... This is to discourage people who aren't going to pick up the thing on release to shy away.
I think this is more likely to combat the "Ebay effect" that we saw with the PS2 and the 360. I don't know what percentage of the launch-time units were resold, but I'm sure that retailers don't like the fact that people are doing it.
By raising the price of pre-orders, they might discourage people from pre-ordering several units. If I were a game speculator fatty, $300 per reserved PS3 would definitely cut into my butter fund. If the reserve price were $25, it's a lot easier to just not buy the extra units if there turns out to be no market.
If my reasoning here is correct, then this would in turn benefit people who just want to get a system. With less speculators, more "actual" gamers can get a system and not have to deal with waiting in line or waiting for a few months until stores can keep the system in stock.
I have never seen any unbiased research on how much piracy actually affects sales of software and computer/video games. Obviously, it does. The real question is how much.
As for this article, it only looks at console games. We need to keep in mind that it is much easier to download crack.rar from a website than to mod your PS2/Xbox/Cube to play copied games. This means that only the more determined will attempt it, further lowering the number.
The PC is no less a gaming "console" for a lot of people than are the "real" consoles.
Yeah, I'd suggest never buying a Gamecube. Updating the graphics drivers is always a fight.
Also:
-viruses/malware -anti-virus/anti-malware -software bugs -hardware bugs -hardware performance -installing new drivers (a version that actually supports your game) -installing the game -waiting for the patch -finding and installing the patch -defragging your drive -tuning your system (killing tray programs, reading readme files, etc)
Of course, some yahoo will claim "but you can do so much MORE with a PC!!1". That isn't the point here. The parent said "PCs are basically equal to consoles". In some respects, this is true. In all others, it's not.
First, you said "nearly all are Democrats". Now you've named some arbitrary politicians who happen to be both supporters of anti-game laws and members of the Democrat party.
The second statement does not provide proof for the first. Unless you are willing to track down every law like this (along with the associated sponsors, etc), you cannot say you have proof of your claim.
Download the Steam client and set up an account. It sounds like Portal is bundled with HL: Ep 2, so then you need to buy that. It will definitely be available on Steam, and probably in stores as well. If you buy it in a store, you will enter a CD-key that gets tied to your Steam account.
Steam then magically unlocks a key for you to play the game. You now have to agree to a license that says you will be a good little consumer, and never try to fool their "protection" measures or disassemble the game to figure out how they work.
You will always have to run your games through Steam, and they have some mechanisms that report back to the mothership from time to time. There is an "offline mode", but this mode can only be used when you are not connected to the Internet, and it only works on games that you've had blessed by the Valve servers. And if you want to loan or sell a game to a friend, tough.
I actually considered going to work with Canonical when Mark [Shuttleworth] was starting it, and there were a couple of problems with that. I think that Mark is eventually interested in having a successful and profitable company, and I don't believe that Linux distributions are a natural fit for for- profit enterprise. Indeed, if you go on my website I have a very long paper on the economics of open source, and one of the things that you can derive from that is the fact that open source works almost worst for a for-profit Linux distribution....
As far as Canonical is concerned, one thing that struck me about Mark is that he really insists on control. For example, when I considered being an employee one of the things standing in the way was the fact that Mark doesn't give his employees stock in his companies. If I'm going to work for someone I'm going to be a little entrepreneurial about it, so I felt that although Ubuntu and Canonical could do a great deal for Debian and be excellent community members, they were never going to be the core, and we could actually get closer to the core by following what I have set up for UserLinux.
"One of the most popular games in America teaches a little boy how to have sex with a prostitute and then beat her to death, and then rewards that," said Rep. Jeff Johnson, who sponsored the bill in the House. "I think some small restriction on that is reasonable."
Your post made me think about why the Free operating systems are not really considered "functional" for gaming, and I think I've figured it out. Put simply, ATI and Nvidia are very much in bed with MS. A closed platform allows ATI and Nvidia to keep all their code and specs secret, because seriously who's ranting about proprietary drivers on Windows? And yes, this applies to Apple and OS X as well.
Sure, ATI and Nvidia put out drivers for Linux, and Nvidia makes a FreeBSD driver. I haven't used the Nvidia driver, but on the ATI side, their drivers are much crappier than the Windows version. On top of this, you have to go through the hassle of installation and compiling a kernel module, making sure your settings are right, and all of that stuff.
This raises the question of why do they do this? It certainly isn't because they "value the customer experience" or anything like that. People often claim it's because of "hiding" other peoples' patents in their code, but I think there's a much simpler answer: control. Controlling every aspect of your business means there's less chance something could go "wrong", and corporations love very much to be in control.
Cedega is a newbie-scaring, hard-to-configure piece of software.
Linux distributions are newbie-scaring, steep-learning-curve pieces of software.
Sounds like a match made in heaven.
Seriously though, think about the type of people that are using a non-Microsoft, non-Apple OS. These are the type people who like to futz with stuff to be uber-leet and have the coolest setup around. So there is a market, but it is a small one. How small is the question.
This is a point that always needs to be kept in mind. People might claim that Cedega is "good" because it allows people to play games without Windows. But this isn't exactly the case.
First, as you pointed out, game companies will be less likely to develop and support native versions of their software. This also has the unfortunate side-effect of forcing Linux gamers to rely on Transgaming, as Cedega is proprietary, unlike, for example, Wine.
The second problem is that native ports are bad for Transgaming. If game companies become less Windows-centric, they'd most likely become more platform-independent. This means that Transgaming is a relic, and therefore will wither. I'm pretty sure this means that they aren't going to do much in the way of advocacy for Linux, and especially not for Free/Open Software.
Slashdot Mirror
Doesn't make a lot of sense these days as I can usually walk into my local supermarket and pick up new launches with no hassle.
Pre-orders are popular with retailers for the same reason gift cards are: it's money in the bank. Even better than gift cards, pre-orders show concrete data on which particular products are going to be popular or sell well.
And there is an unencumbered format that anyone can use. It's called MP3.
I guess I have a different definition of "unencumbered" than you do.
All I want in a music/media player is the ability to get the documentation for the hardware, with no NDA or other legal nonsense attached. This way, it would be easy to write software that works for it and supports every format under the sun (perhaps even things like Flash). It would be easy for someone to port something like Rockbox to it as well.
Microsoft is very successful with hardware. They sell a lot of keyboards, mice, Xboxes and probably also mp3 players.
Um, right. Even though Microsoft has worked hard to obfuscate its unprofitable businesses, it's still rather clear that they are not making any money in the areas you claim here. For example, the Xbox alone has drained $4 billion from the war chest (through the end of 2005).
[The Ipod plays] every format I've already got without any conversion.
Sounds like you don't use any formats I do.
the real money is in hardcore gamers
Are you sure?
Disclaimer: I've never reserved a console before, so I'm going to assume your quote of $25 for pre-ordering is accurate.
... This is to discourage people who aren't going to pick up the thing on release to shy away.
you will now put down a good portion of the price
I think this is more likely to combat the "Ebay effect" that we saw with the PS2 and the 360. I don't know what percentage of the launch-time units were resold, but I'm sure that retailers don't like the fact that people are doing it.
By raising the price of pre-orders, they might discourage people from pre-ordering several units. If I were a game speculator fatty, $300 per reserved PS3 would definitely cut into my butter fund. If the reserve price were $25, it's a lot easier to just not buy the extra units if there turns out to be no market.
If my reasoning here is correct, then this would in turn benefit people who just want to get a system. With less speculators, more "actual" gamers can get a system and not have to deal with waiting in line or waiting for a few months until stores can keep the system in stock.
40 or so years of video games
what
I have never seen any unbiased research on how much piracy actually affects sales of software and computer/video games. Obviously, it does. The real question is how much.
As for this article, it only looks at console games. We need to keep in mind that it is much easier to download crack.rar from a website than to mod your PS2/Xbox/Cube to play copied games. This means that only the more determined will attempt it, further lowering the number.
The PC is no less a gaming "console" for a lot of people than are the "real" consoles.
Yeah, I'd suggest never buying a Gamecube. Updating the graphics drivers is always a fight.
Also:
-viruses/malware
-anti-virus/anti-malware
-software bugs
-hardware bugs
-hardware performance
-installing new drivers (a version that actually supports your game)
-installing the game
-waiting for the patch
-finding and installing the patch
-defragging your drive
-tuning your system (killing tray programs, reading readme files, etc)
Of course, some yahoo will claim "but you can do so much MORE with a PC!!1". That isn't the point here. The parent said "PCs are basically equal to consoles". In some respects, this is true. In all others, it's not.
First, you said "nearly all are Democrats". Now you've named some arbitrary politicians who happen to be both supporters of anti-game laws and members of the Democrat party.
The second statement does not provide proof for the first. Unless you are willing to track down every law like this (along with the associated sponsors, etc), you cannot say you have proof of your claim.
Um, right. And you have proof of this? TFA has nothing to say about anything like that.
It also comes in a suppository.
-Option 1-
Download the Steam client and set up an account. It sounds like Portal is bundled with HL: Ep 2, so then you need to buy that. It will definitely be available on Steam, and probably in stores as well. If you buy it in a store, you will enter a CD-key that gets tied to your Steam account.
Steam then magically unlocks a key for you to play the game. You now have to agree to a license that says you will be a good little consumer, and never try to fool their "protection" measures or disassemble the game to figure out how they work.
You will always have to run your games through Steam, and they have some mechanisms that report back to the mothership from time to time. There is an "offline mode", but this mode can only be used when you are not connected to the Internet, and it only works on games that you've had blessed by the Valve servers. And if you want to loan or sell a game to a friend, tough.
-Option 2-
Disclaimer: this option is not entirely legal.
Buy the game. Wait for the crack.
I don't think you understand what "demo" means.
And people say mysogyny is dead.
what
Um right. Oh and if you think that's just some humorous speculation, look at what Bruce Perens had to say:
"Little guidance" indeed.
lol u said gay
Yeah, that Jeff Johnson guy is a total Democrat.
And there's tons of hidden mini-games. See if you can find the 'vi' and 'emacs' levels. It'll take you years to master them!
Your post made me think about why the Free operating systems are not really considered "functional" for gaming, and I think I've figured it out. Put simply, ATI and Nvidia are very much in bed with MS. A closed platform allows ATI and Nvidia to keep all their code and specs secret, because seriously who's ranting about proprietary drivers on Windows? And yes, this applies to Apple and OS X as well.
Sure, ATI and Nvidia put out drivers for Linux, and Nvidia makes a FreeBSD driver. I haven't used the Nvidia driver, but on the ATI side, their drivers are much crappier than the Windows version. On top of this, you have to go through the hassle of installation and compiling a kernel module, making sure your settings are right, and all of that stuff.
This raises the question of why do they do this? It certainly isn't because they "value the customer experience" or anything like that. People often claim it's because of "hiding" other peoples' patents in their code, but I think there's a much simpler answer: control. Controlling every aspect of your business means there's less chance something could go "wrong", and corporations love very much to be in control.
Cedega is a newbie-scaring, hard-to-configure piece of software.
Linux distributions are newbie-scaring, steep-learning-curve pieces of software.
Sounds like a match made in heaven.
Seriously though, think about the type of people that are using a non-Microsoft, non-Apple OS. These are the type people who like to futz with stuff to be uber-leet and have the coolest setup around. So there is a market, but it is a small one. How small is the question.
This is a point that always needs to be kept in mind. People might claim that Cedega is "good" because it allows people to play games without Windows. But this isn't exactly the case.
First, as you pointed out, game companies will be less likely to develop and support native versions of their software. This also has the unfortunate side-effect of forcing Linux gamers to rely on Transgaming, as Cedega is proprietary, unlike, for example, Wine.
The second problem is that native ports are bad for Transgaming. If game companies become less Windows-centric, they'd most likely become more platform-independent. This means that Transgaming is a relic, and therefore will wither. I'm pretty sure this means that they aren't going to do much in the way of advocacy for Linux, and especially not for Free/Open Software.
Advertising on myspace will just get you post-ironic goths and hipsters. Is that what you really want? Really?