Haven't emulators exploded in popularity (not to mention promised classic gaming on newer consoles) because people DO want to re-play these games? There are also new gamers that want to go back and play earlier games in series that they like. Portable versions of games also often remain in 2D and exhibit the same gameplay as their classic counterparts. People do like these games. Recently expressed by Nintendo and others, gamers may even want shorter games with more intense gameplay that they can pick up and play for 15 minutes, and older games (aside from lack of save features, but remedied witih savestates) are perfect for this type of play.
On top of it all, New Super Mario Bros. just got released and is doing quite well. This is a perfect example of classic gameplay in a successful contemporary game. Maybe developers just shouldn't waste so much time on production values, but should just concentrate on gameplay and level variety.
If battery life were longer maybe it would be more useful as a homebrew device but I'm just tethered to an AC outlet with this, and plus you don't want to drop the PSP or else you'll have dead pixels or even break the thing, unlike with the DS. The load times are long and games show slowdown, there aren't many games that really take advantage of the system and make good use of it. For everything Sony wants me to use it for, I don't think it's a very good machine, so I'd like to tinker around with it and see what I can get it to do that benefits me.
Anything can make you cry as long as it's inspired and effective in conveying the scenario. In a game you can get attached to characters as you nurture them to maximum power in the game and direct them along their journey with your own effort, so if they die, you know the hardships they've been through, etc. Why ask this question about a game specifically? Anything with a story or even just a picture with no words that strikes a chord with you can make you cry. Anything can evoke human emotion. It all depends how it is perceived and its context.
Actually it did work for the Genesis; before SEGA stopped supporting the hardware, the Genesis had a 51% market share. The problem is then that they dropped the support and concentrated on the 32X/Saturn, instead of just focusing on the Genesis until the Saturn was ready to launch. Consumers did not need that whole 32X diversion. The marketing for the Genesis is practically what saved SEGA from obscurity in the U.S. Everyone remembers the SEGA Scream commercials.
On your other point, the Genesis did a bunch of stuff the SNES could not either, so your point is moot. The SNES was pretty much a NES with extra graphics and sound co-processors. The SNES could do a bunch of pre-set effects that looked nice and were easy to implement so they were used all over the place.
The Genesis had a much more powerful core, so it could still accomplish quite a lot, and more in some situations, but with more programming. Check out Adventures of Batman & Robin on Genesis, it's filled with effects done in software. Same with Mega Turrican, Gunstar Heroes, Contra: Hard Corps, and Vectorman 1 & 2.
The advantage that the Genesis had was that you could use the effects in any way you want, since they were programmed though the software, instead of being limited to a few pre-set hardware functions like the SNES, so you could have multiple rotating/scaling elements like in many of the games mentioned above, whereas on the SNES you could only do one scaling or rotating background at a time and not individual sprites (so you couldn't do the multiple enemies zooming at you in the elevator shaft like on the first level of Mega Turrican, and you couldn't do the rotating helicopter against a rotating sky background like on the boss in the Airship level of Gunstar Heroes), and you could apply transparency only to an entire background at a time, or not, so you couldn't have multiple transparent objects (like the flashlights the enemies hold in Batman & Robin), etc. Don't kid yourself, the Genesis could do a helluva lot. On the other hand, the only game with software mixed with hardware effects that were used to such a good extent on the SNES was probably DKC2: Diddy's Kong Quest.
They couldn't advertise the Dreamcast because they had spent most of their money investing in producing the hardware and games. They put all their money into the Dreamcast hardware launch, what little money they had left after dropping the Saturn and not having any profits for quite a while (save for some declining arcade game sales). Before dropping all their money on the Saturn and then terminating its life early to start work on the Dreamcast (which required $$ for R&D as well), they had spent a lot of money on the ill-fated 32X launch. Sega simply did not have the cash.
As for the 32X being a failure, that was mostly because SOA did not know that SOJ was producing the Saturn at the same time as the 32X, so they launched the 32X as their next-gen 32-bit platform, and then SOJ launched the Saturn as their next-gen 32-bit platform. Consumers were confused and enraged.
The biggest part of this failure was that Sega had released the Sega CD and not produced so many games on it (although enough to satisfy gamers), then produced the 32X with hardly any games on it, then dropped it and left gamers in the dust. Then they had the gall to expect that gamers would jump on the Saturn. They shot themselves in the foot. If they just had never made the 32X, Sega could be in a whole new place right now, but as the article mentions, SOJ wanted to run things without informing SOA, who was trying to do their best according to what SOJ did tell them to do.
That sounds fine, if you want to play against people online. What if you don't? Then you have to pay ~$5/mo just in case something may be released for your game. That's like Licensing 6.0 and not getting a new release within your time frame. And if you paid for the game, that money went to fund the development of the expansions, yet you can't have the expansion unless you pay to access the server for online gaming whether or not you even want to play multiplayer.
Isn't offering some games only by distribution over the internet severely limiting your audience? Erecting any barrier of entry will shrink your audience, but internet-only distribution sounds like a bad idea not only because of bandwidth concerns, but because you can't share your game with your friends or sell it on the used games market. Gamers just won't want this.
No, I'm saying they shouldn't charge you for the ability. For example, if you have a DVD player on Linux such as Totem, you should be able to play DVDs without having to pay for the ability to decrypt them. Right now, distros don't include libdvdcss because you have to pay to do this. The DVD player itself is free software, and you paid for a DVD, but you allegedly have to pay a second time, for the use of the IP in libdvdcss presumably (or something in its place), to play the DVD you already paid for. This shouldn't be.
I am not saying that they should provide you with the hardware to play DVDs, but I'm saying they shouldn't stop you from using your own player that they haven't blessed themselves.
The ability to play DVDs should be free. If you buy a DVD, why should you have to buy the right to view it? Shouldn't it be implied that you're going to view it when you buy the disc? So why should you have to pay extra to "license" the DVD decryption scheme to play the DVD you already bought? This whole "pay to buy protected media and then pay for a player that can get past the protection so you can play it" thing is bullshit.
Actually it should be Office 2006, since the development took place during 2006, and it encompasses changes all made during 2006. Should be the same with vehicles also, I don't understand the naming scheme... nor with magazines and their dates... The July issue must be taken off shelves on July 6th, so it won't really be displayed in July, and the reporting was probably done in June? That doesn't make so much sense. Yes, yes... marketing...:P
XBox 360 also has higher priced games, and so did the XBox, until MS brought down the licensing fees in order to allow their games to compete with the PS2's pricing. Now that both will be higher, maybe Nintendo will win out? I know I don't want to play more for games. Hell, as it is I wait for games to come out used to buy them so I don't have to pay full price, it's just too expensive. I'd never get all the games I wanted at that price.
This is no longer: the player is now completely responsible for every action and movement of all characters during battle. FFXII plays like an MMORPG - without the online component. Each character requires the same amount of attention and thought and interaction as a single character does in a traditional MMORPG. The amount of control added to the battle system means that there needs to be some way to step back and not micromanage every character's actions, especially when they often are repetitive. What Square did was to invent a system of "if...then" statements that are extensively customizeable to allow the player complete control over the party.
This is what I find has broken the game, you mostly watch the battles unfold. I don't mind inputting repetitive actions, at least I get to choose everything for every action in every battle. It seems that this is out the window with FF12. I also don't like that it's similar to MMORPGs, I don't like them at all, yet I'm a big Final Fantasy fan. In fact, not much of the gaming population plays MMORPGs, and definitely not all RPG enthusiasts even like MMORPGs. To make FF12 more similar to MMORPGs is going to reduce the amount of players happy with this style of play.
I felt that the typical MMORPG battle system was designed that way because it's impossible to halt the entire world so that one character can input their command and then the world would resume. It was a limitation of the MMORPG, that it has to be realtime. On a single player game there is no such limit, which is why the battle system is the way it is. It's not that I feel that there is less strategy in such a battle system either, it's just more hectic if everything is realtime, and then I just don't ENJOY playing, I just feel pressured.
That's one reason why I use linux. Every software is in its own package. Every install is the same, with no wizards or checkboxes or registration or serial #s or expiry date (even some freeware I've downloaded for Windows has 'expired', requiring me to get the new version which may not behave the way I want).
What, exactly, is wrong with suing someone? It's a legitimate and often necessary thing to do. There is no "plague" of lawsuits, the way you are trying to present it.
Hell yes there is, there's a plague of stupid lawsuits. Remember those commercials in the 90s that they used to air all over TV saying if you slip and fall on someone else's property you could get millions of dollars? Just run up on someone's lawn and retire! What about the idiotic IP-driven business model, patent now and sue later? As a bonus, look how much stupider political campaigns are getting. It's more finger pointing, blame game, and win-by-smearing-your-opponent bullshit.
Not gonna happen. The reason is that your lament is millennia old. Seriously. There are writings from ancient Greece and Rome that read exactly like the cranky old man of today, who decries the awful state of the youth "these days".
People are much more mature, truth-seeking, and anti-bullshit. The rise in awareness of beurocracy, authority/political abuse, all point to people getting more pissed off about this. The fact that people are organizing things such as the EFF and FSF and OSS (heck, even blogs like mini-msft) and choosing to stick to their ideals even when it hurts them, in order to combat such stupidity, is a sign. These movements and organizations are growing in strength and number, and people are more aware of them as they are becoming more relevant due to media and participation.
Very wise words. I'm in the same position now as you and don't really know what to do about it. Just curious, what were the medications he suggested?
I'm at the point where they're totally routine, I mean, just before every day of work I have a lot of trouble falling asleep, and routinely wake up hours before I mean to. And when I get up in the middle of the night, there's no way I can get back to sleep because I'm thinking "Oh shit, if I don't get back to sleep, I'll feel like crap and my day will be hell!" It's very predictable.
They've started declining because I'm trying to make myself not care more and more and I think as a result, doing slightly worse at my job, but at least still better than most because I also get panic attacks about whether I'm doing a good job or not, since I want to keep mine. Still, it's not going away and I still feel a lot of pressure that I figure must all be coming from inside my mind because everyone else seems to be able to deal with it. Anyway, hopefully mine will go away permanently because it's really annoying not leading a normal life.
Get a girlfriend (or boyfriend depending on your preferance), drink some beers, wine or whatever you like and enjoy college, this is your LAST chance. The real world is a lot tougher and a lot less fun until you become a billionare or die:)
My school teachers had always been telling students that elementary school is easy compared to junior/high school and that we had better enjoy it while we can because it was about to get a lot tougher. So I started dreading high school. Then in high school they started saying the same thing about college, and that college was as close as the real world could get in school, and that we had better work hard to get into the right one and do the right thing because our life depends on it, otherwise we'll be working at gas stations. So I started dreading college. Then in college they stopped holding our hand or putting guns to our heads to come to school and do assignments, so since I dreaded college and its assignments so much, to stop being stressed out I simply didn't pay attention to it because I couldn't handle the dread and pressure. Then I dropped out of college. Saying shit like "It's your last chance, it'll get a lot tougher!" is not going to make someone do something better, it'll simply impede them like it did me. Now I'm having a hell of a time.
Actually it might be better to state it as such: "Reutty was 'more interested in following the law than the police'"... after all, she was just following procedure, it is the police that wanted to break it and do an end-run around the law.
They were probably already using.DOC anyway. Whether they're switching to ODF from MSXML or from MSDOC, what difference does it make? The same reason to change still remains.
As if people weren't confused enough as to what.NET was anyway... At first Microsoft had named their future version of their OS "Windows.NET", they have.NET My Services web services, there's a.NET conference, a ".NET Enterprise Server", a.net TLD.
Not only this, but.NET was supposed to be a common language runtime environment, and now it's encompassing APIs that are not specific to the environment but specific to a certain version of Windows.
Now they're bringing this same confusion to WinFX? WinFX used to be the three pillars to the new Windows API to be included in Vista, encompassing Avalon (presentation layer), Indigo (communications layer), and WinFS (metadata database for the filesystem). Then some of these pillars were dropped, and now apparently according to Wikipedia there are four pillars. I'm not sure if these will still be available for Windows XP, and where Windows 2000 stands. Not only that, but will Mono have to re-implement major parts of Windows just to be.NET 3.0 compliant?
Anyway, all this makes me wonder, what is MS trying to accomplish with this moving-target definition of WinFX and.NET? They should just hold all announcements until they ship a product, IMHO.
This cost reduction would obviously only be temporary. Intel didn't lower their prices until AMD's presence forced them to, so if we give that market share back to Intel, obviously they will raise their prices again. On the other hand, if Intel actually can't afford to reduce prices and are just temporarily absorbing the cost until AMD disappears, they will just pass the cost onto the future customer, so they'd raise their prices even more. In both cases, buying intel will only make them raise their prices, so where is the incentive to buy intel again after they've proven they won't lower their prices without significant competition (it took years for AMD to have this much effect on intel).
AMD produces faster chips cheaper than intel. We'd just be shooting ourselves in the foot if we didn't support this.
That explains why Adobe doesn't fancy the idea of Microsoft including PDF exporting functionality into Office 12!
No it doesn't, because it's impossible to explain something that never happened. MS only took PDF out of Office because they suspected that Adobe might threaten them with a lawsuit. They don't even know, this is just speculation, and so far nothing has happened. It's just MS inventing an excuse to justify not using PDF. Come on, if you were on the verge of releasing a completely redundant format that was supposed to overtake one you were constantly using, and you needed your format to look more important, what would you do?
I agree, I have to do the same thing, and it pisses me off. MS shouldn't have promised backward compatibility if it was going to be with so few titles. It might as well not be in there. Out of the 22 XBox games I own, I can only play 3 on the XBox 360. That really sucks.
A lot of applications don't really integrate well into the desktop, there's not much new about that. But people still use them. They all have to use their own widgets. QuickTime, MSOffice, WinAMP, MusicMatch JukeBox, Windows Media Player... even PhotoShop doesn't integrate well in Windows, FireFox struggles to integrate well with desktop environments other than Gnome (but is doing a better job than most cross-platform apps), etc...
They're forced to issue this statement. We already know that there won't be many high quality launch games because according to SEGA and THQ, most developers haven't received PS3 devkits yet. Many developers may choose to release their games on the PS2 instead of doing a half-assed attempt at converting it to a PS3 game because they'll simply make more money on the PS2's larger established user base than they would by making it a lackluster PS3 title with a small installed base at launch.
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On top of it all, New Super Mario Bros. just got released and is doing quite well. This is a perfect example of classic gameplay in a successful contemporary game. Maybe developers just shouldn't waste so much time on production values, but should just concentrate on gameplay and level variety.
If battery life were longer maybe it would be more useful as a homebrew device but I'm just tethered to an AC outlet with this, and plus you don't want to drop the PSP or else you'll have dead pixels or even break the thing, unlike with the DS. The load times are long and games show slowdown, there aren't many games that really take advantage of the system and make good use of it. For everything Sony wants me to use it for, I don't think it's a very good machine, so I'd like to tinker around with it and see what I can get it to do that benefits me.
Anything can make you cry as long as it's inspired and effective in conveying the scenario. In a game you can get attached to characters as you nurture them to maximum power in the game and direct them along their journey with your own effort, so if they die, you know the hardships they've been through, etc. Why ask this question about a game specifically? Anything with a story or even just a picture with no words that strikes a chord with you can make you cry. Anything can evoke human emotion. It all depends how it is perceived and its context.
Actually it did work for the Genesis; before SEGA stopped supporting the hardware, the Genesis had a 51% market share. The problem is then that they dropped the support and concentrated on the 32X/Saturn, instead of just focusing on the Genesis until the Saturn was ready to launch. Consumers did not need that whole 32X diversion. The marketing for the Genesis is practically what saved SEGA from obscurity in the U.S. Everyone remembers the SEGA Scream commercials.
On your other point, the Genesis did a bunch of stuff the SNES could not either, so your point is moot. The SNES was pretty much a NES with extra graphics and sound co-processors. The SNES could do a bunch of pre-set effects that looked nice and were easy to implement so they were used all over the place.
The Genesis had a much more powerful core, so it could still accomplish quite a lot, and more in some situations, but with more programming. Check out Adventures of Batman & Robin on Genesis, it's filled with effects done in software. Same with Mega Turrican, Gunstar Heroes, Contra: Hard Corps, and Vectorman 1 & 2.
The advantage that the Genesis had was that you could use the effects in any way you want, since they were programmed though the software, instead of being limited to a few pre-set hardware functions like the SNES, so you could have multiple rotating/scaling elements like in many of the games mentioned above, whereas on the SNES you could only do one scaling or rotating background at a time and not individual sprites (so you couldn't do the multiple enemies zooming at you in the elevator shaft like on the first level of Mega Turrican, and you couldn't do the rotating helicopter against a rotating sky background like on the boss in the Airship level of Gunstar Heroes), and you could apply transparency only to an entire background at a time, or not, so you couldn't have multiple transparent objects (like the flashlights the enemies hold in Batman & Robin), etc. Don't kid yourself, the Genesis could do a helluva lot. On the other hand, the only game with software mixed with hardware effects that were used to such a good extent on the SNES was probably DKC2: Diddy's Kong Quest.
They couldn't advertise the Dreamcast because they had spent most of their money investing in producing the hardware and games. They put all their money into the Dreamcast hardware launch, what little money they had left after dropping the Saturn and not having any profits for quite a while (save for some declining arcade game sales). Before dropping all their money on the Saturn and then terminating its life early to start work on the Dreamcast (which required $$ for R&D as well), they had spent a lot of money on the ill-fated 32X launch. Sega simply did not have the cash.
As for the 32X being a failure, that was mostly because SOA did not know that SOJ was producing the Saturn at the same time as the 32X, so they launched the 32X as their next-gen 32-bit platform, and then SOJ launched the Saturn as their next-gen 32-bit platform. Consumers were confused and enraged.
The biggest part of this failure was that Sega had released the Sega CD and not produced so many games on it (although enough to satisfy gamers), then produced the 32X with hardly any games on it, then dropped it and left gamers in the dust. Then they had the gall to expect that gamers would jump on the Saturn. They shot themselves in the foot. If they just had never made the 32X, Sega could be in a whole new place right now, but as the article mentions, SOJ wanted to run things without informing SOA, who was trying to do their best according to what SOJ did tell them to do.
That sounds fine, if you want to play against people online. What if you don't? Then you have to pay ~$5/mo just in case something may be released for your game. That's like Licensing 6.0 and not getting a new release within your time frame. And if you paid for the game, that money went to fund the development of the expansions, yet you can't have the expansion unless you pay to access the server for online gaming whether or not you even want to play multiplayer.
Isn't offering some games only by distribution over the internet severely limiting your audience? Erecting any barrier of entry will shrink your audience, but internet-only distribution sounds like a bad idea not only because of bandwidth concerns, but because you can't share your game with your friends or sell it on the used games market. Gamers just won't want this.
No, I'm saying they shouldn't charge you for the ability. For example, if you have a DVD player on Linux such as Totem, you should be able to play DVDs without having to pay for the ability to decrypt them. Right now, distros don't include libdvdcss because you have to pay to do this. The DVD player itself is free software, and you paid for a DVD, but you allegedly have to pay a second time, for the use of the IP in libdvdcss presumably (or something in its place), to play the DVD you already paid for. This shouldn't be.
I am not saying that they should provide you with the hardware to play DVDs, but I'm saying they shouldn't stop you from using your own player that they haven't blessed themselves.
The ability to play DVDs should be free. If you buy a DVD, why should you have to buy the right to view it? Shouldn't it be implied that you're going to view it when you buy the disc? So why should you have to pay extra to "license" the DVD decryption scheme to play the DVD you already bought? This whole "pay to buy protected media and then pay for a player that can get past the protection so you can play it" thing is bullshit.
Actually it should be Office 2006, since the development took place during 2006, and it encompasses changes all made during 2006. Should be the same with vehicles also, I don't understand the naming scheme... nor with magazines and their dates... The July issue must be taken off shelves on July 6th, so it won't really be displayed in July, and the reporting was probably done in June? That doesn't make so much sense. Yes, yes... marketing... :P
XBox 360 also has higher priced games, and so did the XBox, until MS brought down the licensing fees in order to allow their games to compete with the PS2's pricing. Now that both will be higher, maybe Nintendo will win out? I know I don't want to play more for games. Hell, as it is I wait for games to come out used to buy them so I don't have to pay full price, it's just too expensive. I'd never get all the games I wanted at that price.
This is no longer: the player is now completely responsible for every action and movement of all characters during battle. FFXII plays like an MMORPG - without the online component. Each character requires the same amount of attention and thought and interaction as a single character does in a traditional MMORPG. The amount of control added to the battle system means that there needs to be some way to step back and not micromanage every character's actions, especially when they often are repetitive. What Square did was to invent a system of "if...then" statements that are extensively customizeable to allow the player complete control over the party.
This is what I find has broken the game, you mostly watch the battles unfold. I don't mind inputting repetitive actions, at least I get to choose everything for every action in every battle. It seems that this is out the window with FF12. I also don't like that it's similar to MMORPGs, I don't like them at all, yet I'm a big Final Fantasy fan. In fact, not much of the gaming population plays MMORPGs, and definitely not all RPG enthusiasts even like MMORPGs. To make FF12 more similar to MMORPGs is going to reduce the amount of players happy with this style of play.
I felt that the typical MMORPG battle system was designed that way because it's impossible to halt the entire world so that one character can input their command and then the world would resume. It was a limitation of the MMORPG, that it has to be realtime. On a single player game there is no such limit, which is why the battle system is the way it is. It's not that I feel that there is less strategy in such a battle system either, it's just more hectic if everything is realtime, and then I just don't ENJOY playing, I just feel pressured.
Perhaps the money should be used to fund open protocols/APIs and solve the problem they are fighting against in the first place.
That's one reason why I use linux. Every software is in its own package. Every install is the same, with no wizards or checkboxes or registration or serial #s or expiry date (even some freeware I've downloaded for Windows has 'expired', requiring me to get the new version which may not behave the way I want).
What, exactly, is wrong with suing someone? It's a legitimate and often necessary thing to do. There is no "plague" of lawsuits, the way you are trying to present it.
Hell yes there is, there's a plague of stupid lawsuits. Remember those commercials in the 90s that they used to air all over TV saying if you slip and fall on someone else's property you could get millions of dollars? Just run up on someone's lawn and retire! What about the idiotic IP-driven business model, patent now and sue later? As a bonus, look how much stupider political campaigns are getting. It's more finger pointing, blame game, and win-by-smearing-your-opponent bullshit.
Not gonna happen. The reason is that your lament is millennia old. Seriously. There are writings from ancient Greece and Rome that read exactly like the cranky old man of today, who decries the awful state of the youth "these days".
People are much more mature, truth-seeking, and anti-bullshit. The rise in awareness of beurocracy, authority/political abuse, all point to people getting more pissed off about this. The fact that people are organizing things such as the EFF and FSF and OSS (heck, even blogs like mini-msft) and choosing to stick to their ideals even when it hurts them, in order to combat such stupidity, is a sign. These movements and organizations are growing in strength and number, and people are more aware of them as they are becoming more relevant due to media and participation.
Very wise words. I'm in the same position now as you and don't really know what to do about it. Just curious, what were the medications he suggested?
I'm at the point where they're totally routine, I mean, just before every day of work I have a lot of trouble falling asleep, and routinely wake up hours before I mean to. And when I get up in the middle of the night, there's no way I can get back to sleep because I'm thinking "Oh shit, if I don't get back to sleep, I'll feel like crap and my day will be hell!" It's very predictable.
They've started declining because I'm trying to make myself not care more and more and I think as a result, doing slightly worse at my job, but at least still better than most because I also get panic attacks about whether I'm doing a good job or not, since I want to keep mine. Still, it's not going away and I still feel a lot of pressure that I figure must all be coming from inside my mind because everyone else seems to be able to deal with it. Anyway, hopefully mine will go away permanently because it's really annoying not leading a normal life.
Get a girlfriend (or boyfriend depending on your preferance), drink some beers, wine or whatever you like and enjoy college, this is your LAST chance. The real world is a lot tougher and a lot less fun until you become a billionare or die :)
My school teachers had always been telling students that elementary school is easy compared to junior/high school and that we had better enjoy it while we can because it was about to get a lot tougher. So I started dreading high school. Then in high school they started saying the same thing about college, and that college was as close as the real world could get in school, and that we had better work hard to get into the right one and do the right thing because our life depends on it, otherwise we'll be working at gas stations. So I started dreading college. Then in college they stopped holding our hand or putting guns to our heads to come to school and do assignments, so since I dreaded college and its assignments so much, to stop being stressed out I simply didn't pay attention to it because I couldn't handle the dread and pressure. Then I dropped out of college. Saying shit like "It's your last chance, it'll get a lot tougher!" is not going to make someone do something better, it'll simply impede them like it did me. Now I'm having a hell of a time.
Actually it might be better to state it as such: "Reutty was 'more interested in following the law than the police'"... after all, she was just following procedure, it is the police that wanted to break it and do an end-run around the law.
They were probably already using .DOC anyway. Whether they're switching to ODF from MSXML or from MSDOC, what difference does it make? The same reason to change still remains.
As if people weren't confused enough as to what .NET was anyway... At first Microsoft had named their future version of their OS "Windows.NET", they have .NET My Services web services, there's a .NET conference, a ".NET Enterprise Server", a .net TLD.
.NET was supposed to be a common language runtime environment, and now it's encompassing APIs that are not specific to the environment but specific to a certain version of Windows.
.NET 3.0 compliant?
.NET? They should just hold all announcements until they ship a product, IMHO.
Not only this, but
Now they're bringing this same confusion to WinFX? WinFX used to be the three pillars to the new Windows API to be included in Vista, encompassing Avalon (presentation layer), Indigo (communications layer), and WinFS (metadata database for the filesystem). Then some of these pillars were dropped, and now apparently according to Wikipedia there are four pillars. I'm not sure if these will still be available for Windows XP, and where Windows 2000 stands. Not only that, but will Mono have to re-implement major parts of Windows just to be
Anyway, all this makes me wonder, what is MS trying to accomplish with this moving-target definition of WinFX and
AMD produces faster chips cheaper than intel. We'd just be shooting ourselves in the foot if we didn't support this.
No it doesn't, because it's impossible to explain something that never happened. MS only took PDF out of Office because they suspected that Adobe might threaten them with a lawsuit. They don't even know, this is just speculation, and so far nothing has happened. It's just MS inventing an excuse to justify not using PDF. Come on, if you were on the verge of releasing a completely redundant format that was supposed to overtake one you were constantly using, and you needed your format to look more important, what would you do?
I agree, I have to do the same thing, and it pisses me off. MS shouldn't have promised backward compatibility if it was going to be with so few titles. It might as well not be in there. Out of the 22 XBox games I own, I can only play 3 on the XBox 360. That really sucks.
A lot of applications don't really integrate well into the desktop, there's not much new about that. But people still use them. They all have to use their own widgets. QuickTime, MSOffice, WinAMP, MusicMatch JukeBox, Windows Media Player... even PhotoShop doesn't integrate well in Windows, FireFox struggles to integrate well with desktop environments other than Gnome (but is doing a better job than most cross-platform apps), etc...
They're forced to issue this statement. We already know that there won't be many high quality launch games because according to SEGA and THQ, most developers haven't received PS3 devkits yet. Many developers may choose to release their games on the PS2 instead of doing a half-assed attempt at converting it to a PS3 game because they'll simply make more money on the PS2's larger established user base than they would by making it a lackluster PS3 title with a small installed base at launch.