All these "analysts" claim that the PS3 is costing something like $700-800 to make. And this article uses this number in a pretty tenuous argument to "prove" that the reason the PS3 costs more than the 360 is based on the BD-ROM alone, without taking into consideration all the parts in both of the consoles.
The question I have is: where is the proof? Sony has never sold their consoles at a loss. I think that the cost Sony is eating here is more likely the R&D money that they spent to develop all the new stuff going into the machine (Cell, Bluray, other chips).
But if we look at the tech, we see that it's not something that will only be used in the PS3. Bluray will be used in standalone players. Cell will probably make it into other devices. The cost is spread out among several products, as well as spread over the next 5-20 years, depending on how long (for example) Bluray lasts.
It's also worth noting that Nintendo has always been about branding and "brand purity". They have lawyerbots who send out cease-and-desist letters to websites that look suspicious. And it's no accident that the Gamecube, DS, and Wii have tech that makes it much harder to pirate and emulate games.
Your claim that more games == more servers needed is flawed
You replied:
Where exactly did I make that claim? I said that Live supports more than one game, but I didn't say it needs more servers than a single MMO.
Let's look at your original post:
Look at WoW. People pay significantly more than $50 a year, but the dedicated servers for it have a great deal of difficulty supporting the load. Xbox Live supports many more games. Running servers for all of them would be vastly more expensive.
If you're going to constantly shift your argument around, I think I'm finished here.
No, Apple knows better than you how to organize the files on the iPod. You are free to organize your music however you want.
Wrong, wrong, and wrong. I want file management to be simple and uniform across all the devices I use. This way, I don't have to rely on some bullshit application or wait for someone to reverse-engineer the damn thing just so I can read the data off of it. Sure, claim that they just mangle the filenames. There's a name for this already, it's called vendor lock-in.
It's really cute, though. Your claims about how Apple's just so clever for taking all the thought out of computing for the "average person", so let's just do it their way. Never mind the fact that this is the same argument used by companies like MS and IBM when they try to lock people into their "solutions".
But the bigger idiocy you spout is the fact that I shouldn't be able to do things the way I want to, just because you like Apple's way of doing things. The greatest asset of general-purpose computing hardware is that you can make it do whatever you want it to. Why should I give this up to some corporation? Because dumbass fanboys on slashdot think so? Please.
The problem here is that I figured you were smart enough to deduce what my argument was, so I didn't explicitly state it. This was a mistake. You obviously didn't understand my main point.
All the examples I gave were reasons why a service like Live costs much less to run than an MMO, and why your use of WoW as a benchmark of comparison is bad. Your claim that more games == more servers needed is flawed, for these reasons. When the flaws are exposed, your argument falls apart.
The first is that you used an anecdote for the "single game" side of your equation. WoW is not all MMOs, and all MMOs are not WoW. The fact that MMO X is experiencing server difficulties does not mean that all MMOs have trouble with server loads.
The second reason your argument is flawed is that you fail to take into account the fundamental differences between the two things you are comparing. It's making a comparison between two completely different animals.
Taking these things into consideration, claiming that "more games offered == more server power needed" is absurd.
Cases help direct the airflow, as well as secure your components. The only way to keep your stuff cool without a case would be to point a big-ass fan at it. A case allows you to use smaller fans, as it creates more of a wind-tunnel type environment. This is assuming you have your fans set up right. As for securing your components, a case gives you a sturdy frame to bolt down stuff like PCI cards, hard drives, and optical drives. And it reduces the possibility of ruining your stuff with Dr. Pepper.
People are hypocritical. Therefore, governments are too. The US is hypocritical in this as well, as we ignored copyrights for a long time, yet now we want everyone to respect ours.
The major problems here are the WTO and the Berne Convention. The Wikipedia article says Victor Hugo instigated it, and much of the idea was based on the French concept of "right of the author", rather than the economic idea of copyright. It requires all non-photograph and non-cinema copyrightable works to be protected for life + 50 years. Why they chose two arbitrary classes of copyrightable things to be different I have no idea.
The WTO comes into this by requiring member countries to sign the TRIPs Agreement, which contains most of the language of the Berne Convention. Interestingly, the WTO defines computer programs as "literary works" in this agreement, so software patents could either invalidate themselves or open us up to literary patents, at least according to the WTO.
The kicker here is that to be a member of the WTO, you must accept whatever they tell you to. Oh and there's pretty much no oversight. So any member country who decided to go against the grain would be barred from trading with any other member countries until they were in compliance.
I think that in the video game industry, people try and draw logical conclusions without first really defining their starting point. Just thinking about this for a second, I put forth the assertion that there are two components gamers love: something significantly better than before, and something that is a new idea.
Now, there's a fine line between "new idea" and "gimmick". I think that Nintendo walks this line every day. When the DS and the Wii controller were both announced, people at first were pretty skeptical. Although we don't know about the Wii yet, the DS has managed to turn out some cool stuff. On the other hand, we have stuff like the GBA-to-Cube link and the U-Force controller. Personally, I think that as long as the Wiimote works well, it will do at least as well as the Gamecube did.
I think you raise a good point here. Even if the PSP cost the same as a DS, I'd still get the DS, mostly because there's a lot of cool games I'd like to play. If the PSP cost 10 bucks, I might get one, but that doesn't mean I have a good reason to.
Let's look at an example of how this will work out:
3:00 PM - Kiddie gets out of school
3:30 PM - Kiddie gets new XKam-Xtreme (come on, you know it's going to have a dumb name.)
3:45 PM - Kiddie jizzes all over the place taking it out of the box
3:46 PM - First ball shot taken
3:50 PM - Banned from Xbox Live for life
Let's see... networked game delivery has existed since at least the Genesis/Super NES days, and let's not forget shareware. So really Microsoft was copying these guys.
Zonk normally reviews games on/. If you've ever read video game reviews, you'd know that 7/10 is the baseline for anything that has any redeeming value whatsoever. I really wish they'd enforce a movie-style ratings scale, 0 to 4 stars with.5 increments. 0 to 10 seems to throw people off.
I don't think that Google will ever try and push something like GoogleOS. They are primarily an advertising- and service-based company, operating through your local web browser. All their downloadable stuff isn't really related to their core business. If, however, something like Google Earth really took off, they might start selling "premium" accounts for it or something.
I dunno, it just seems like programs and OSes are more of a "product", whereas Google is really more heavy on services.
Slashdot Mirror
Merit.
The question I have is: where is the proof? Sony has never sold their consoles at a loss. I think that the cost Sony is eating here is more likely the R&D money that they spent to develop all the new stuff going into the machine (Cell, Bluray, other chips).
But if we look at the tech, we see that it's not something that will only be used in the PS3. Bluray will be used in standalone players. Cell will probably make it into other devices. The cost is spread out among several products, as well as spread over the next 5-20 years, depending on how long (for example) Bluray lasts.
Not really. Lots of us are penniless students who happen to get semi-free internet access.
It's also worth noting that Nintendo has always been about branding and "brand purity". They have lawyerbots who send out cease-and-desist letters to websites that look suspicious. And it's no accident that the Gamecube, DS, and Wii have tech that makes it much harder to pirate and emulate games.
Golf used to be.
Empirical evidence, please.
Your claim that more games == more servers needed is flawed
You replied:
Where exactly did I make that claim? I said that Live supports more than one game, but I didn't say it needs more servers than a single MMO.
Let's look at your original post:
Look at WoW. People pay significantly more than $50 a year, but the dedicated servers for it have a great deal of difficulty supporting the load. Xbox Live supports many more games. Running servers for all of them would be vastly more expensive.
If you're going to constantly shift your argument around, I think I'm finished here.
This has nothing to do with "some church crap". It has everything to do with a lucrative business that isn't giving a cut to the politicians.
Yeah, let's just fire that guy because he belongs to political party/religion/group X. That stuff has never been protected. Oh wait.
Well, Arenanet was founded by some of the Diablo team...
Wrong, wrong, and wrong. I want file management to be simple and uniform across all the devices I use. This way, I don't have to rely on some bullshit application or wait for someone to reverse-engineer the damn thing just so I can read the data off of it. Sure, claim that they just mangle the filenames. There's a name for this already, it's called vendor lock-in.
It's really cute, though. Your claims about how Apple's just so clever for taking all the thought out of computing for the "average person", so let's just do it their way. Never mind the fact that this is the same argument used by companies like MS and IBM when they try to lock people into their "solutions".
But the bigger idiocy you spout is the fact that I shouldn't be able to do things the way I want to, just because you like Apple's way of doing things. The greatest asset of general-purpose computing hardware is that you can make it do whatever you want it to. Why should I give this up to some corporation? Because dumbass fanboys on slashdot think so? Please.
All the examples I gave were reasons why a service like Live costs much less to run than an MMO, and why your use of WoW as a benchmark of comparison is bad. Your claim that more games == more servers needed is flawed, for these reasons. When the flaws are exposed, your argument falls apart.
The first is that you used an anecdote for the "single game" side of your equation. WoW is not all MMOs, and all MMOs are not WoW. The fact that MMO X is experiencing server difficulties does not mean that all MMOs have trouble with server loads.
The second reason your argument is flawed is that you fail to take into account the fundamental differences between the two things you are comparing. It's making a comparison between two completely different animals.
Taking these things into consideration, claiming that "more games offered == more server power needed" is absurd.
Cases help direct the airflow, as well as secure your components. The only way to keep your stuff cool without a case would be to point a big-ass fan at it. A case allows you to use smaller fans, as it creates more of a wind-tunnel type environment. This is assuming you have your fans set up right. As for securing your components, a case gives you a sturdy frame to bolt down stuff like PCI cards, hard drives, and optical drives. And it reduces the possibility of ruining your stuff with Dr. Pepper.
Lugging them to LAN parties.
Taking the sides off your case is like building a wind tunner with screen doors.
People are hypocritical. Therefore, governments are too. The US is hypocritical in this as well, as we ignored copyrights for a long time, yet now we want everyone to respect ours.
The WTO comes into this by requiring member countries to sign the TRIPs Agreement, which contains most of the language of the Berne Convention. Interestingly, the WTO defines computer programs as "literary works" in this agreement, so software patents could either invalidate themselves or open us up to literary patents, at least according to the WTO.
The kicker here is that to be a member of the WTO, you must accept whatever they tell you to. Oh and there's pretty much no oversight. So any member country who decided to go against the grain would be barred from trading with any other member countries until they were in compliance.
Now, there's a fine line between "new idea" and "gimmick". I think that Nintendo walks this line every day. When the DS and the Wii controller were both announced, people at first were pretty skeptical. Although we don't know about the Wii yet, the DS has managed to turn out some cool stuff. On the other hand, we have stuff like the GBA-to-Cube link and the U-Force controller. Personally, I think that as long as the Wiimote works well, it will do at least as well as the Gamecube did.
I think you raise a good point here. Even if the PSP cost the same as a DS, I'd still get the DS, mostly because there's a lot of cool games I'd like to play. If the PSP cost 10 bucks, I might get one, but that doesn't mean I have a good reason to.
3:00 PM - Kiddie gets out of school
3:30 PM - Kiddie gets new XKam-Xtreme (come on, you know it's going to have a dumb name.)
3:45 PM - Kiddie jizzes all over the place taking it out of the box
3:46 PM - First ball shot taken
3:50 PM - Banned from Xbox Live for life
Problem solved.
Let's see... networked game delivery has existed since at least the Genesis/Super NES days, and let's not forget shareware. So really Microsoft was copying these guys.
Yeah, Nintendo's the only game company to ever use gimmicks. Ever. The Eyetoy, VMU, and Sega CD/32x hybrid games never even existed.
Zonk normally reviews games on /. If you've ever read video game reviews, you'd know that 7/10 is the baseline for anything that has any redeeming value whatsoever. I really wish they'd enforce a movie-style ratings scale, 0 to 4 stars with .5 increments. 0 to 10 seems to throw people off.
I dunno, it just seems like programs and OSes are more of a "product", whereas Google is really more heavy on services.
Lots of smaller sites that sell stuff use paypal (think indie bands, etc). Lots of not-selling-stuff-sites accept Paypal donations.