Honestly, Google doesn't really have to worry about the economy.
Uh. Yeah. They do.
Unless people stop getting internet access, Google has a rather steady source of income via ads and no one but the businesses pay a cent (and really, advertising is only going to slightly increase with a slowing economy as more people want to get more customers).
1) The public doesn't give Google any money. 2) The businesses that buy advertising don't automatically have the money to increase advertising budgets in a 'slowing economy'.
Google isn't like the car manufacturers in which consumers voluntarily have to pay a large sum to get a car and taking a large amount of money to make the car.
Google's customer ARE the businesses.
Google isn't in bad financial shape.
It only lost 60% of its value this year. If you think that isn't having a MAJOR impact on it you are on crack. Yeah, its a long way from bankrupt, and I think we all agree it will weather this relatively well, but still... a REALLY big chunk of that ad revenue came from companies that are suffering badly right now... from AIG and Bear Stearns to Ford and GM. Their revenue is definitely shrinking right now.
What? He Pirates them? Maybe someone buys games for him.
I don't really see anything where you actually counter the guy. You are just a Nintendo fanboy that can't hear that everyone doesn't love your console.
Not remotely. I've got a more than just the Wii myself.
People with a 360 buy more games.
I agreed with that "per xbox360". However, its practically irrelevant. 40million Wii owners buying 4.5 games is more games than 25 million Xbox360 owners buying 7.
Also, the Wii comes with a game which is generally counted in these surveys which artificially inflate the Wii's numbers.
Those attach numbers were from NPD which only counts the USA, and doesn't count the Wii Sports pack in. The Wii's numbers are not inflated. If anything they are under -- as Japan doesn't pack in Wii sports.
act is, everyone I know who has a Wii (with the exception one who has small children) don't touch their Wii anymore. I don't know everyone, but I think it is fairly telling about the games that are on the Wii.
And about the people you know.
Everyone got one for the novelty of it and it being a sort of a status symbol. "Oh, you have a Wii? Cool, can I try?" But once the party is over, it doesn't really offer games that appeal to people to play them on their own.
So your point is that the 'hard core gamers' that play by themselves, and want long 'deep' games currently have more selection on the 360/ps3? I agreed with that. I even explained WHY.
The funny thing is the guy is arguing for deeper games...which would help Nintendo do better.
Nintendo is one publisher. And its done its share of deep games. It did Zelda and Metroid and Super Mario Galaxy, and there are more trickling out. Nintendo isn't the 'problem' here.
If you want =more= deep games, ask the 3rd party devs where they are. I explained why 3rd parties haven't stepped up yet: they were caught unawares, and they thought the market for those games was on the ps3/360. They're waking up to the Wii, and ramping up, but it takes time.
You are saying that Nintendo is fine and should do nothing. Why are you arguing against better games for the Wii? How is that helping?
Nintendo is fine. At most I'd expect to see maybe one more 'deep' game out of them per year. I simply explained WHY the Wii has a dearth of those games. I never once said it was a 'good thing'. But I don't blame Nintendo. I blame the 3rd parties... but I can see why they made the decisions they did.
Another point to note though is the average Wii game sells for 25% less than the average 360 game, so there's still more more money being spent on Xbox 360 games.
You might be right. But if the wii's trend lines continue, it won't be true for long.
That said, Dev's don't really care about "money spent". They care about money in their pocket, after expenses.
The average xbox game costs more to make. And they pay a lot more in licensing fees to MS too. So the higher sticker price on an xbox game doesn't remotely translate to higher profit per unit sold.
Also, I'm not sure how true the 25m units is. Vgchartz.com has always been incorrect on XBox 360 sales figures
I wouldn't blindly trust a number from vgchartz either. But 25M is straight from the mouth of Microsoft:
"In her presentation to the BMO Capital Markets Conference this morning, Microsoft's Mindy Mount noted that the Xbox 360's installation base will hit 25 million sometime this month, surpassing the installation base for the original Xbox. The 360 will hit that figure in three years, compared to more than five for the original machine."
I'm not really sure what your point is, there's no reason Nintendo couldn't entertain both audiences, currently they're ignoring the hardcore audience
Nintendo has never been a 'hardcore gamer' publisher. That's ALWAYS been the 3rd parties. Nintendo isn't blocking them from developing for the Wii, they just haven't stepped up yet. For their own reasons (not all of them good.)
whilst Microsoft and Sony are increasing their appeal to the casual audience with titles like LittleBigPlanet, Lips, Viva Pinata. Even Microsoft's revamp of their interface and Sony's home are clearly much more geared towards the casual audience. Nintendo is at risk of losing some of it's userbase, without taking any of Microsoft and Sony's back to make up for it.
Yes, MS and Sony are expanding their appeal. They've seen the grass is pretty green on the casual side. The next generation will be interesting, to say the least. But MS/Sony have a tough juggling act if they target the casuals too hard they'll alienate their base. If they pander to their base, Nintendo will dominate the casuals again.
Regardless even those like me who do have a 360 or PS3 as well wouldn't have bought these consoles if the Wii had the titles to entertain them and Nintendo would've easily been able to pull in more software sales as a result if they were to satisfy both audiences.
And that ties back to the 3rd party devs. They thought the Wii would be gamecube 2.0. Obviously the last 2 years have been a wake up call, but the big games take 2 years to make, so they are still ramping up. I =think= we will see those 'deep' games hit the Wii, because at this point, the Wii is big enough that there really ARE enough consoles out there that the 'ex-PC-gamer who has a Wii but not a 360' demographic is large enough to make it profitable.
Humans seem to be able to adapt and fill pretty much any niche and environment we come across.
You really think the 7 billion of us could survive on world of ice or desert? What percentage of us would have to die off for it to be sustainable? 50%? 90%?
Food and/or water are in pretty limited supply there. Those types of areas can only directly support a very minimal population.
Your first comment seems to indicate that all we need to do is nudge the climate to some course other than the one it is one now.
Quite the opposite. My first comment indicates that there is a risk that the "small" impact that mankind is placing on the environment now =IS= the nudge that shifts climate into a rapidly new and unknown direction.
Your second comment is even more problematic. First, you agree that if we try to force a change the system might react in a way we cannot foresee then you suggest that all we need to do is keep the existing system from changing.
Not quite. Your misunderstanding.
I'm saying we should leave the natural cycles that have served us well for the last few million years alone. "Keep it the same" doesn't mean try to freeze it to today's values, it means minimize our impact.
and already contain enough energy that we couldn't drive them in a particular direction if we wanted.
The issue isn't 'driving' them, its the potential for a relatively small nudge to knock them on a completely different course.
AND, if somehow we did manage to force a change, the system would likely react in a way we wouldn't be able to foresee.
Correct. However the best conclusion is that the only scientifically valid goal right now is to keep things the SAME. We know we can inhabit the earth the way it is now. We don't know that it would be as inhabitable if it were to change.
People who just have a "job" won't want to continue doing their job after they are finished for the day. People who love what they do, will continue what they do, even after they are finished with their hours at the end of the day. Those are the people you won't working for you and providing services.
IT and computing like most things is a big field that's so broad as to be meaningless. Even for people who love their job, there is crud work that they don't enjoy. I love my job, I'm "that person" you refer to... after work I spend hours more writing software, building computers, playing with stuff in VMs, etc.
At work, one small part of what I do is manage the backups, ensuring the rolling backups occur daily, with full backups on Friday. At home... its been a few months since I last did a proper backup.
Re:And there proves the people selling them are du
on
Trick or Treatment
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If I had the technology to remove every single atom of any given element from any substantial amount of pretty much any other material at all, I'd be richer than Bill Gates.
The technique they use requires that they have 19.8kg of something known not to have any of the element in order to mix it with the element, and then end up with 1g that won't have any of that element.
If the end goal was simply to obtain something without the element, then you've got 19.8kg of it before you even start.
The point is when the 360 was limited to hardcore games the attach rate was much higher than that of the Wii and you're right- this is because hardcore gamers are the ones that spend money on games, whilst Nintendo has captured a larger audience it's not an audience that for the most part will buy more than one or two games a year at christmas time and nothing else.
Look, its a great theory, I'd give you a +5 insightful for the hypothesis, but the reality just doesn't line up.
According to NPD, The current attach rate for Xbox360 is 7.0; Nintendo's is 4.64. Putting the Wii attach rate around around 2/3rds what the 360 is at. [Note I beleive NPD reports on american sales so Wii sports would not be counted towards the attach.]
However the Wii has sold ~42M units worldwide while the Xbox360 has moved ~25M units. That means 195M (42 * 4.64) games have sold for the Wii vs 175M (25 * 7) games for xbox 360.
The Wii has outstripped the xbox 360 by enough that its overcome the attach rate. If the libraries for both games was the same, and the titles sold in the same proportion, a given title would have sold more copies on the Wii than on the 360. Now, of course the libraries are different, and on the Wii you have to compete with Nintendo's own first party blockbusters.
but the point is that back when those last stats were released, even though Nintendo had double the installed user base, it still had sold less games than Microsoft had with the 360.
This as you can see is no longer true. Your hypothesis is wrong. The Xbox had a 1 year head start and a higher attach rate, but the Wii has still surpassed its software sales. Further, the Wii attach rate is actually steadily -increasing-. While not there yet, the Wii is becoming the new PS2, where the massive install base ensures any title released on it outsells the other platforms.
I'd say Nintendo's biggest threat now is the next generation, if Microsoft and Sony take their idea and couple it with their usual state of the art systems and a plethora of games with deep and interesting story lines whilst Nintendo continues...
No offense, but take your blinders off. Nintendo is selling in droves to gamers who don't want that. My 4 year old son plays BoomBlox, MarioKart, WiiSports, MarioParty8, Zack&Wiki with his grandmother on the Wii. They have so much fun my parents bought a Wii for their place. Sony / Microsoft will NEVER EVER capture them with 'deep and interesting story lines'. Neither my 4 year old nor my mother would EVER play them.
If the Sony and MS do what you suggest, they'll be EXACTLY where they are today next generation: fighting over the 'male tween' crowd, that wants to play 100+ hour 'deep' games and cares about texture resolution.
The Wii uses the same disc format as the 360 and doesn't require development of ultra-high detail models and textures so why aren't we seeing a plethora of games with deep and impressive, ultra-interactive worlds to explore?
2 reasons:
1) Because people like you, who want deep impressive ultra-interactive worlds to explore, already have a 360, and would bitch about the lack of ultra-high detail models and textures on the Wii version. Developers know this. That's why the Wii has a dearth of that kind of title. They know everyone who is interested in that kind of title already ALSO has a 360 and wouldn't buy the wii version if both were available.
2) Because developers didnt think the Wii had a shot in hell of dominating sales the way it did. So they've mostly only had time to scramble quick and dirty titles to try and cash in. Only in the last year have they begun ramping up to release the 'big' titles on the Wii.
Because the Wii, with its continued growth, will soon reach the point where the developer can sell YOU the game on the Xbox, and still release it profitably on the Wii, even though all the review sites will jerk off about the xbox's superior graphics and and rate the Wii version the worst of the 3 due to its lack of HD, lack of dolby dts, and lack of xbox live "achievements".
Microtransaction isn't just about making a profit. It can also allow a new company/game to grab a sizable player base quickly. "How?" you may ask. Many of the microtransaction mmos I have played offers a standard set of content free to sign up and free to play.
Those aren't microtransaction mmos, those are simply pay-as-you-go mmos (vs subscription mmos). And pay-as-you mmos are a great idea. I'd play a lot more MMOs if I didn't have to subscribe -- because I have only x hours to play, and if I add a 2nd mmo my costs double but I don't have any more time to play... lousy value proposition.
A microtransaction mmo is when you get the game, and then after you login you choose a class... warrior or cleric are there... or you can pay $2.00 to unlock ranger.
And then you walk into town... the inn is open and the blacksmith is open... but $2.00 to unlock the artisans guild hall which is lets you dye your armor. So you walk into the blacksmith... ooh, a shiny +1 shield is available but its got a picture of a pink butterfly on it. But for $2.00 you can unlock the +1 shield-pack with a pictures of dragons, unicorns, bears, and lions -- still pink unfortunately, but you can dye them in the artisans hall!
Then you head out into the wilderness to hunt and explore... You approach a hut in the woods, enter it, kill the 2 gobblins inside and find a trap door to a cellar. You reach down to open the trap door... $2.00 to unlock the goblin tunnels instance. Maybe later...
Then you form a group with some other newbie... and an hour later he's gained levels 3 times, and your barely half way through your level... and you started out at the same point... so you ask him about it... and he tells you that for $1/potion you can boost your xp/kill by 50% for 30 minutes -- he found the potion vendor inside a cool goblin tunnels instance...
You are also kind of donating the hardware, which is a much bigger cost than the power. $10 worth of electricity will do more of these calcs than a $10 donation would enable.
Except donating 10$ cash being a tax deduction costs you less than $10 electricity which isn't. So you could donate say, $14 cash and have it cost the same $10 electricity.
Further, that's not $10/year. For a high end GPU running folding at home, you are easily pushing 300 Watts. In most places doing that 24x7 will run you upwards of $25/mo. ($300/year)
I suspect if everyone participating in F@H donated what it cost them in electricity, the MILLIONS that would result in could be put to better use. But that's me personally... if your into F@H, have fun with it, its your money. But you really should know what its costing you. And if you are running F@H on someone elses dime (e.g. your running it at work or in your mom's basement) you probably should stop.
It runs most people over $100 year. If you've got SLI/crossfire and a playstation 3... and live in an expensive state like New York or California you could be pushing $1000/year.
isn't it the position off the game companies that their games are pirated so much that they are loosing most of their sales to pirates?
That's the rhetoric. I doubt even they really believe it. But its a much better call to action than "We're losing 15% to pirates."
wouldn't that mean the pirate community is larger than the legitimate community?
Even if it were, the "pirate community" isn't much of a "community". Instead you'd have dozens of almost empty servers all over the place. If the pirate community ran a high profile central server for authorizing copies, matchmaking and hosting games, etc, it would be a gigantic target for the publisher to take aim at.
wouldn't that mean you could conceivably have a larger network of people on the pirated version? this applies more to the pc versions of games atm i suppose.
The problem with personalization is that it's an extremely sensitive topic for 1% of the population (us, the geeks), but 99% of end-users couldn't care less.
99% of end-uses couldn't care less until it bites them in the ass, and then you see their dopey teary eyed face splattered all over the news when something hits the fan... "I just can't believe google/facebook/youtube/myspace had all this information about me! The identity thieves started by hacking my gmail account... and from that were able to reset my facebook password, and from there they had everything... they were able to completely drain my bank accounts, and even managed to successfully impersonate me to my parents and scammed them out of thousands... my parents said the theives used a bad quality phone line, but they didn't suspect a thing, because they new everything... they asked how Dad was coping with losing his job, how my sister was doing, they even talked about the camping trip we went on in the summer... and they got all this from the online data, reading my email, looking at my pictures, and trawling my social network... I just can't beleive this was all right there for the taking."
Then they'll say... "The government really needs to do something."
So this isn't an overall spending decrease, but a spending "deceleration". Put another way, it's not a step in the right direction, but it's a smaller step in the wrong direction than usual.
I disagree.
Thanks to inflation, you have to spend 3% more this year than last year to buy the same stuff. A 1% total spending increase (not corrected for inflation) actually represents a net reduction in the amount of goods/services purchased.
Besides to carry the bleeding wound metaphor... taking a gushing wound and reducing it to an oozing wound is big step in the RIGHT direction.
Same group that would remove any elected official from office if he or she refused to step down after losing an election. I mean, we do have someone that does this right? Dick Cheney can't just decide to keep being Vice President indefinitely right? If he fails to voluntarily step down and vacate his office, there are people to ensure it still happens, right?
What checks would be on this new office's powers? Who removes them, if they violate the constitution? Are they elected or appointed? By who? Is it a political or non-partisan office?
Indeed! Who is handling this now? If a congressman or a senator or a president refused to leave, who removes them? And what checks are on their power? How are they appointed?...
I honestly don't know who does this or how, but they already exist, and its not the big can of worms you describe. All we'd be doing is adding another criteria for calling them into action.
Now instead of 'just when they lose an election and refuse to leave in an orderly fashion' it will be that plus 'when they sponsor an unconstitutional bill and then refuse to leave in an orderly fashion'.
Why would you want to needlessly complicate things when there is already a simple and effective solution: the voters.
If you're living on an extended patch of ground between two nuclear adversaries, you'd have to be pretty cavalier about living to not have some kind of protection against "short rounds".
The real issue is that several Canadian targets were of strategic significance in a US/USSR war. Winnipeg, Manitoba for example is several times more populous than any city in North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, or Minnesota*. Winnipeg has the largest international airport by far in the area. The closest alternative would be Minneapolis/St Paul 700km to the SE -- which would also be a target.
If you were the USSR bombing military and civilian you'd have to be a complete moron to leave Winnipeg standing? 50 miles north of the US border, with an airfield capable of supporting the big planes?
Several other Canadian sites had similar strategic significance by being comparatively large cities with lots of facilities (such as airfields, shipyards, rail hubs, etc) in strategic 'northern' positions.
There were also other likely Canadian targets like major hydroelectric dams, etc.
* Note: Minnesota's Mineapolis/St Paul metro area is considerably larger than Winnipeg. But that's the only exception - and as noted it would also be a target; plus its 700km to the SE, on the far eastern edge of the block of 5 states mentioned.
One of the consequences, at least what is supposed to be a consequence, relies on the people. When our elected officials do stupid things like create unconstitutional bills it is our responsibility as citizens of the nation to take notice and use our only power: vote them out of office.
And my point is we shouldn't have to. If they pass an unconstitutional law, it should be automatic, and permanent. Having the people have to take action to fire a politician who passed an unconstitutional law is absurd as having the people launch grassroots campaigns to convict criminals.
Can you imagine if the police said, "Hey we caught the guy who keyed your car, but if you want him punished, you can start by organizing a petition - you'll need 10,000 signatures. Only at that point will the DA press charges, and in the meantime the guy who keyed your car... he'll be collecting signatures too. If he gets 10,000 before you do, you lose. Oh, and he's more popular than you."
The Supreme Court has explicitly reversed itself a number of times.
I don't really see how that's an actual problem. Firstly, it really doesn't happen -that- often. Secondly, if the court rules against something, and a congressman loses his job, and then down the road the supreme court reverses itself... in the big scheme of things what was the harm?
Remember, the congressman sponsored a law that he SHOULD have at least known had a good probability of being challenged in the supreme court, and a good estimation of how it would fare there, and he knew what the consequences were of it not passing. He made an INFORMED decision whether to gamble on it.
Seriously, I can live with that.
Besides, if anything, congress really shouldn't be passing laws that have even a reasonable CHANCE of being overturned in the supreme court. I don't really want laws that run "right up the line" either. If you are considering a bill and your lawyers and advisers are calculating it will probably be challenged, and that if challenged that 4 supreme justices will side with it, and 4 probably won't, and it will comes down to how Ginsberg is going to interpret the definition of X...then hey, maybe its not a very good law to gamble your career on! It probably should be reworked a bit so that it will sail through the supreme court.
As a bonus we'd also have fewer supreme court reversals as fewer laws would be proposed that tried to squeak up against the line without crossing it. Congress would be motivated to give the constitution some "space", which is a good thing.
To use a/. car analagy... if the legal limit on drunk driving is 0.08, and you know you lose your license if you get caught with that... well, you don't drink up to 0.079 and then hop into your car. You make damned sure you are comfortably away from blowing over. You don't want to blow 0.081 in a breathalyzer, and then squeak out of a DUI via a more precise blood test administered at the police station. Better to just keep yourself well below the legal limit and sail through.
Congress passes all kinds of laws which are later found to be unconstitutional by the court. The ultimate check, in our system, on the congress and president is the judiciary. How would you do it?
By making there be consequences for passing an unconstitutional law, for starters.
They swear to uphold the constitution and then introduce an unconstitutional law... there should be real consequences for this. You know, to give them an incentive not to do it.
I'm not suggesting making it a criminal offense or sending them to federal 'pound me in the ass' prison or anything, but perhaps anyone that sponsors an unconstitutional bill should automatically be removed from congress. ie "fired" and is not eligible to run again, nor serve in any position in government higher than 'X'.
But I would rather have the correct decision after a well reasoned and thought out case, than a quick gut reflex (which is the role the congress usually plays).
If there were real consequences to introducing unconstitutional laws, maybe they'll think a little harder.
Slashdot Mirror
(-) slow data retrival (but this is just data which has to be archived, and won't be accessed
anymore)
Just file it in /dev/null
(+) infinite space
(+) very low space/power requirements
(+) secure
(-) if you say it won't be accessed, you better mean it. ;)
Honestly, Google doesn't really have to worry about the economy.
Uh. Yeah. They do.
Unless people stop getting internet access, Google has a rather steady source of income via ads and no one but the businesses pay a cent (and really, advertising is only going to slightly increase with a slowing economy as more people want to get more customers).
1) The public doesn't give Google any money.
2) The businesses that buy advertising don't automatically have the money to increase advertising budgets in a 'slowing economy'.
Google isn't like the car manufacturers in which consumers voluntarily have to pay a large sum to get a car and taking a large amount of money to make the car.
Google's customer ARE the businesses.
Google isn't in bad financial shape.
It only lost 60% of its value this year. If you think that isn't having a MAJOR impact on it you are on crack. Yeah, its a long way from bankrupt, and I think we all agree it will weather this relatively well, but still... a REALLY big chunk of that ad revenue came from companies that are suffering badly right now... from AIG and Bear Stearns to Ford and GM. Their revenue is definitely shrinking right now.
no, this is an emulator. Wine Is Not an Emulator.
Wine doesn't emulate a machine that that runs windows that you can run windows apps on.
Wine does emulate windows itself.
Your 4 year old doesn't buy games.
What? He Pirates them? Maybe someone buys games for him.
I don't really see anything where you actually counter the guy. You are just a Nintendo fanboy that can't hear that everyone doesn't love your console.
Not remotely. I've got a more than just the Wii myself.
People with a 360 buy more games.
I agreed with that "per xbox360". However, its practically irrelevant. 40million Wii owners buying 4.5 games is more games than 25 million Xbox360 owners buying 7.
Also, the Wii comes with a game which is generally counted in these surveys which artificially inflate the Wii's numbers.
Those attach numbers were from NPD which only counts the USA, and doesn't count the Wii Sports pack in. The Wii's numbers are not inflated. If anything they are under -- as Japan doesn't pack in Wii sports.
act is, everyone I know who has a Wii (with the exception one who has small children) don't touch their Wii anymore. I don't know everyone, but I think it is fairly telling about the games that are on the Wii.
And about the people you know.
Everyone got one for the novelty of it and it being a sort of a status symbol. "Oh, you have a Wii? Cool, can I try?" But once the party is over, it doesn't really offer games that appeal to people to play them on their own.
So your point is that the 'hard core gamers' that play by themselves, and want long 'deep' games currently have more selection on the 360/ps3? I agreed with that. I even explained WHY.
The funny thing is the guy is arguing for deeper games...which would help Nintendo do better.
Nintendo is one publisher. And its done its share of deep games. It did Zelda and Metroid and Super Mario Galaxy, and there are more trickling out. Nintendo isn't the 'problem' here.
If you want =more= deep games, ask the 3rd party devs where they are. I explained why 3rd parties haven't stepped up yet: they were caught unawares, and they thought the market for those games was on the ps3/360. They're waking up to the Wii, and ramping up, but it takes time.
You are saying that Nintendo is fine and should do nothing. Why are you arguing against better games for the Wii? How is that helping?
Nintendo is fine. At most I'd expect to see maybe one more 'deep' game out of them per year. I simply explained WHY the Wii has a dearth of those games. I never once said it was a 'good thing'. But I don't blame Nintendo. I blame the 3rd parties... but I can see why they made the decisions they did.
Another point to note though is the average Wii game sells for 25% less than the average 360 game, so there's still more more money being spent on Xbox 360 games.
You might be right. But if the wii's trend lines continue, it won't be true for long.
That said, Dev's don't really care about "money spent". They care about money in their pocket, after expenses.
The average xbox game costs more to make. And they pay a lot more in licensing fees to MS too. So the higher sticker price on an xbox game doesn't remotely translate to higher profit per unit sold.
Also, I'm not sure how true the 25m units is. Vgchartz.com has always been incorrect on XBox 360 sales figures
I wouldn't blindly trust a number from vgchartz either. But 25M is straight from the mouth of Microsoft:
"In her presentation to the BMO Capital Markets Conference this morning, Microsoft's Mindy Mount noted that the Xbox 360's installation base will hit 25 million sometime this month, surpassing the installation base for the original Xbox. The 360 will hit that figure in three years, compared to more than five for the original machine."
http://kotaku.com/5086505/microsoft-360-install-base-to-overtake-original-xbox-this-month
I'm not really sure what your point is, there's no reason Nintendo couldn't entertain both audiences, currently they're ignoring the hardcore audience
Nintendo has never been a 'hardcore gamer' publisher. That's ALWAYS been the 3rd parties. Nintendo isn't blocking them from developing for the Wii, they just haven't stepped up yet. For their own reasons (not all of them good.)
whilst Microsoft and Sony are increasing their appeal to the casual audience with titles like LittleBigPlanet, Lips, Viva Pinata. Even Microsoft's revamp of their interface and Sony's home are clearly much more geared towards the casual audience. Nintendo is at risk of losing some of it's userbase, without taking any of Microsoft and Sony's back to make up for it.
Yes, MS and Sony are expanding their appeal. They've seen the grass is pretty green on the casual side. The next generation will be interesting, to say the least. But MS/Sony have a tough juggling act if they target the casuals too hard they'll alienate their base. If they pander to their base, Nintendo will dominate the casuals again.
Regardless even those like me who do have a 360 or PS3 as well wouldn't have bought these consoles if the Wii had the titles to entertain them and Nintendo would've easily been able to pull in more software sales as a result if they were to satisfy both audiences.
And that ties back to the 3rd party devs. They thought the Wii would be gamecube 2.0. Obviously the last 2 years have been a wake up call, but the big games take 2 years to make, so they are still ramping up. I =think= we will see those 'deep' games hit the Wii, because at this point, the Wii is big enough that there really ARE enough consoles out there that the 'ex-PC-gamer who has a Wii but not a 360' demographic is large enough to make it profitable.
Humans seem to be able to adapt and fill pretty much any niche and environment we come across.
You really think the 7 billion of us could survive on world of ice or desert? What percentage of us would have to die off for it to be sustainable? 50%? 90%?
Food and/or water are in pretty limited supply there. Those types of areas can only directly support a very minimal population.
Your first comment seems to indicate that all we need to do is nudge the climate to some course other than the one it is one now.
Quite the opposite. My first comment indicates that there is a risk that the "small" impact that mankind is placing on the environment now =IS= the nudge that shifts climate into a rapidly new and unknown direction.
Your second comment is even more problematic. First, you agree that if we try to force a change the system might react in a way we cannot foresee then you suggest that all we need to do is keep the existing system from changing.
Not quite. Your misunderstanding.
I'm saying we should leave the natural cycles that have served us well for the last few million years alone. "Keep it the same" doesn't mean try to freeze it to today's values, it means minimize our impact.
and already contain enough energy that we couldn't drive them in a particular direction if we wanted.
The issue isn't 'driving' them, its the potential for a relatively small nudge to knock them on a completely different course.
AND, if somehow we did manage to force a change, the system would likely react in a way we wouldn't be able to foresee.
Correct. However the best conclusion is that the only scientifically valid goal right now is to keep things the SAME. We know we can inhabit the earth the way it is now. We don't know that it would be as inhabitable if it were to change.
People who just have a "job" won't want to continue doing their job after they are finished for the day. People who love what they do, will continue what they do, even after they are finished with their hours at the end of the day. Those are the people you won't working for you and providing services.
IT and computing like most things is a big field that's so broad as to be meaningless. Even for people who love their job, there is crud work that they don't enjoy. I love my job, I'm "that person" you refer to... after work I spend hours more writing software, building computers, playing with stuff in VMs, etc.
At work, one small part of what I do is manage the backups, ensuring the rolling backups occur daily, with full backups on Friday. At home... its been a few months since I last did a proper backup.
If I had the technology to remove every single atom of any given element from any substantial amount of pretty much any other material at all, I'd be richer than Bill Gates.
The technique they use requires that they have 19.8kg of something known not to have any of the element in order to mix it with the element, and then end up with 1g that won't have any of that element.
If the end goal was simply to obtain something without the element, then you've got 19.8kg of it before you even start.
The point is when the 360 was limited to hardcore games the attach rate was much higher than that of the Wii and you're right- this is because hardcore gamers are the ones that spend money on games, whilst Nintendo has captured a larger audience it's not an audience that for the most part will buy more than one or two games a year at christmas time and nothing else.
Look, its a great theory, I'd give you a +5 insightful for the hypothesis, but the reality just doesn't line up.
According to NPD, The current attach rate for Xbox360 is 7.0; Nintendo's is 4.64. Putting the Wii attach rate around around 2/3rds what the 360 is at. [Note I beleive NPD reports on american sales so Wii sports would not be counted towards the attach.]
However the Wii has sold ~42M units worldwide while the Xbox360 has moved ~25M units. That means 195M (42 * 4.64) games have sold for the Wii vs 175M (25 * 7) games for xbox 360.
The Wii has outstripped the xbox 360 by enough that its overcome the attach rate. If the libraries for both games was the same, and the titles sold in the same proportion, a given title would have sold more copies on the Wii than on the 360. Now, of course the libraries are different, and on the Wii you have to compete with Nintendo's own first party blockbusters.
but the point is that back when those last stats were released, even though Nintendo had double the installed user base, it still had sold less games than Microsoft had with the 360.
This as you can see is no longer true. Your hypothesis is wrong. The Xbox had a 1 year head start and a higher attach rate, but the Wii has still surpassed its software sales. Further, the Wii attach rate is actually steadily -increasing-. While not there yet, the Wii is becoming the new PS2, where the massive install base ensures any title released on it outsells the other platforms.
I'd say Nintendo's biggest threat now is the next generation, if Microsoft and Sony take their idea and couple it with their usual state of the art systems and a plethora of games with deep and interesting story lines whilst Nintendo continues...
No offense, but take your blinders off. Nintendo is selling in droves to gamers who don't want that. My 4 year old son plays BoomBlox, MarioKart, WiiSports, MarioParty8, Zack&Wiki with his grandmother on the Wii. They have so much fun my parents bought a Wii for their place. Sony / Microsoft will NEVER EVER capture them with 'deep and interesting story lines'. Neither my 4 year old nor my mother would EVER play them.
If the Sony and MS do what you suggest, they'll be EXACTLY where they are today next generation: fighting over the 'male tween' crowd, that wants to play 100+ hour 'deep' games and cares about texture resolution.
The Wii uses the same disc format as the 360 and doesn't require development of ultra-high detail models and textures so why aren't we seeing a plethora of games with deep and impressive, ultra-interactive worlds to explore?
2 reasons:
1) Because people like you, who want deep impressive ultra-interactive worlds to explore, already have a 360, and would bitch about the lack of ultra-high detail models and textures on the Wii version. Developers know this. That's why the Wii has a dearth of that kind of title. They know everyone who is interested in that kind of title already ALSO has a 360 and wouldn't buy the wii version if both were available.
2) Because developers didnt think the Wii had a shot in hell of dominating sales the way it did. So they've mostly only had time to scramble quick and dirty titles to try and cash in. Only in the last year have they begun ramping up to release the 'big' titles on the Wii.
Because the Wii, with its continued growth, will soon reach the point where the developer can sell YOU the game on the Xbox, and still release it profitably on the Wii, even though all the review sites will jerk off about the xbox's superior graphics and and rate the Wii version the worst of the 3 due to its lack of HD, lack of dolby dts, and lack of xbox live "achievements".
(Also, about 37 foldings of it would make the paper so high to reach the moon).
No problem. Just bend the resulting column in half 37 times.
ONCE AND FOR ALL!
Pretty close - newegg has one for ~ 129.99
And 1 in 4 reviewers rated it 2/5 or less. I tend to avoid products where that high a percentage thought the product sucked.
I'd love to find a place to get LCD panels with dead pixels on the cheap - perfect for a server-in-the-closet...
ebay / craigslist / retail "openbox" deals
Microtransaction isn't just about making a profit. It can also allow a new company/game to grab a sizable player base quickly. "How?" you may ask. Many of the microtransaction mmos I have played offers a standard set of content free to sign up and free to play.
Those aren't microtransaction mmos, those are simply pay-as-you-go mmos (vs subscription mmos). And pay-as-you mmos are a great idea. I'd play a lot more MMOs if I didn't have to subscribe -- because I have only x hours to play, and if I add a 2nd mmo my costs double but I don't have any more time to play... lousy value proposition.
A microtransaction mmo is when you get the game, and then after you login you choose a class... warrior or cleric are there... or you can pay $2.00 to unlock ranger.
And then you walk into town... the inn is open and the blacksmith is open... but $2.00 to unlock the artisans guild hall which is lets you dye your armor. So you walk into the blacksmith... ooh, a shiny +1 shield is available but its got a picture of a pink butterfly on it. But for $2.00 you can unlock the +1 shield-pack with a pictures of dragons, unicorns, bears, and lions -- still pink unfortunately, but you can dye them in the artisans hall!
Then you head out into the wilderness to hunt and explore... You approach a hut in the woods, enter it, kill the 2 gobblins inside and find a trap door to a cellar. You reach down to open the trap door... $2.00 to unlock the goblin tunnels instance. Maybe later...
Then you form a group with some other newbie... and an hour later he's gained levels 3 times, and your barely half way through your level... and you started out at the same point... so you ask him about it... and he tells you that for $1/potion you can boost your xp/kill by 50% for 30 minutes -- he found the potion vendor inside a cool goblin tunnels instance...
Mark my words. That's where things are heading.
You are also kind of donating the hardware, which is a much bigger cost than the power. $10 worth of electricity will do more of these calcs than a $10 donation would enable.
Except donating 10$ cash being a tax deduction costs you less than $10 electricity which isn't. So you could donate say, $14 cash and have it cost the same $10 electricity.
Further, that's not $10/year. For a high end GPU running folding at home, you are easily pushing 300 Watts. In most places doing that 24x7 will run you upwards of $25/mo. ($300/year)
I suspect if everyone participating in F@H donated what it cost them in electricity, the MILLIONS that would result in could be put to better use. But that's me personally... if your into F@H, have fun with it, its your money. But you really should know what its costing you. And if you are running F@H on someone elses dime (e.g. your running it at work or in your mom's basement) you probably should stop.
It runs most people over $100 year. If you've got SLI/crossfire and a playstation 3... and live in an expensive state like New York or California you could be pushing $1000/year.
isn't it the position off the game companies that their games are pirated so much that they are loosing most of their sales to pirates?
That's the rhetoric. I doubt even they really believe it. But its a much better call to action than "We're losing 15% to pirates."
wouldn't that mean the pirate community is larger than the legitimate community?
Even if it were, the "pirate community" isn't much of a "community". Instead you'd have dozens of almost empty servers all over the place. If the pirate community ran a high profile central server for authorizing copies, matchmaking and hosting games, etc, it would be a gigantic target for the publisher to take aim at.
wouldn't that mean you could conceivably have a larger network of people on the pirated version? this applies more to the pc versions of games atm i suppose.
Conceivably yes. Practically speaking, no.
The problem with personalization is that it's an extremely sensitive topic for 1% of the population (us, the geeks), but 99% of end-users couldn't care less.
99% of end-uses couldn't care less until it bites them in the ass, and then you see their dopey teary eyed face splattered all over the news when something hits the fan... "I just can't believe google/facebook/youtube/myspace had all this information about me! The identity thieves started by hacking my gmail account... and from that were able to reset my facebook password, and from there they had everything... they were able to completely drain my bank accounts, and even managed to successfully impersonate me to my parents and scammed them out of thousands... my parents said the theives used a bad quality phone line, but they didn't suspect a thing, because they new everything... they asked how Dad was coping with losing his job, how my sister was doing, they even talked about the camping trip we went on in the summer... and they got all this from the online data, reading my email, looking at my pictures, and trawling my social network... I just can't beleive this was all right there for the taking."
Then they'll say... "The government really needs to do something."
So this isn't an overall spending decrease, but a spending "deceleration". Put another way, it's not a step in the right direction, but it's a smaller step in the wrong direction than usual.
I disagree.
Thanks to inflation, you have to spend 3% more this year than last year to buy the same stuff. A 1% total spending increase (not corrected for inflation) actually represents a net reduction in the amount of goods/services purchased.
Besides to carry the bleeding wound metaphor... taking a gushing wound and reducing it to an oozing wound is big step in the RIGHT direction.
I guess you didn't bother to even read the summary, because you seem to have missed the 2nd sentence:
"On the chopping block is $700 million in school aid and $3.5 billion in health care subsidies."
So over 4 billion in spending cuts, in just 2 areas, and probably several others too.
Who would you have do this, then?
Same group that would remove any elected official from office if he or she refused to step down after losing an election. I mean, we do have someone that does this right? Dick Cheney can't just decide to keep being Vice President indefinitely right? If he fails to voluntarily step down and vacate his office, there are people to ensure it still happens, right?
What checks would be on this new office's powers? Who removes them, if they violate the constitution? Are they elected or appointed? By who? Is it a political or non-partisan office?
Indeed! Who is handling this now? If a congressman or a senator or a president refused to leave, who removes them? And what checks are on their power? How are they appointed? ...
I honestly don't know who does this or how, but they already exist, and its not the big can of worms you describe. All we'd be doing is adding another criteria for calling them into action.
Now instead of 'just when they lose an election and refuse to leave in an orderly fashion' it will be that plus 'when they sponsor an unconstitutional bill and then refuse to leave in an orderly fashion'.
Why would you want to needlessly complicate things when there is already a simple and effective solution: the voters.
While it may be 'simple' it is not 'effective'.
If you're living on an extended patch of ground between two nuclear adversaries, you'd have to be pretty cavalier about living to not have some kind of protection against "short rounds".
The real issue is that several Canadian targets were of strategic significance in a US/USSR war. Winnipeg, Manitoba for example is several times more populous than any city in North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, or Minnesota*. Winnipeg has the largest international airport by far in the area. The closest alternative would be Minneapolis/St Paul 700km to the SE -- which would also be a target.
If you were the USSR bombing military and civilian you'd have to be a complete moron to leave Winnipeg standing? 50 miles north of the US border, with an airfield capable of supporting the big planes?
Several other Canadian sites had similar strategic significance by being comparatively large cities with lots of facilities (such as airfields, shipyards, rail hubs, etc) in strategic 'northern' positions.
There were also other likely Canadian targets like major hydroelectric dams, etc.
* Note: Minnesota's Mineapolis/St Paul metro area is considerably larger than Winnipeg. But that's the only exception - and as noted it would also be a target; plus its 700km to the SE, on the far eastern edge of the block of 5 states mentioned.
One of the consequences, at least what is supposed to be a consequence, relies on the people. When our elected officials do stupid things like create unconstitutional bills it is our responsibility as citizens of the nation to take notice and use our only power: vote them out of office.
And my point is we shouldn't have to. If they pass an unconstitutional law, it should be automatic, and permanent. Having the people have to take action to fire a politician who passed an unconstitutional law is absurd as having the people launch grassroots campaigns to convict criminals.
Can you imagine if the police said, "Hey we caught the guy who keyed your car, but if you want him punished, you can start by organizing a petition - you'll need 10,000 signatures. Only at that point will the DA press charges, and in the meantime the guy who keyed your car... he'll be collecting signatures too. If he gets 10,000 before you do, you lose. Oh, and he's more popular than you."
But who decides what's unconstitutional?
The supreme court.
The Supreme Court has explicitly reversed itself a number of times.
I don't really see how that's an actual problem. Firstly, it really doesn't happen -that- often. Secondly, if the court rules against something, and a congressman loses his job, and then down the road the supreme court reverses itself... in the big scheme of things what was the harm?
Remember, the congressman sponsored a law that he SHOULD have at least known had a good probability of being challenged in the supreme court, and a good estimation of how it would fare there, and he knew what the consequences were of it not passing. He made an INFORMED decision whether to gamble on it.
Seriously, I can live with that.
Besides, if anything, congress really shouldn't be passing laws that have even a reasonable CHANCE of being overturned in the supreme court. I don't really want laws that run "right up the line" either. If you are considering a bill and your lawyers and advisers are calculating it will probably be challenged, and that if challenged that 4 supreme justices will side with it, and 4 probably won't, and it will comes down to how Ginsberg is going to interpret the definition of X...then hey, maybe its not a very good law to gamble your career on! It probably should be reworked a bit so that it will sail through the supreme court.
As a bonus we'd also have fewer supreme court reversals as fewer laws would be proposed that tried to squeak up against the line without crossing it. Congress would be motivated to give the constitution some "space", which is a good thing.
To use a /. car analagy... if the legal limit on drunk driving is 0.08, and you know you lose your license if you get caught with that... well, you don't drink up to 0.079 and then hop into your car. You make damned sure you are comfortably away from blowing over. You don't want to blow 0.081 in a breathalyzer, and then squeak out of a DUI via a more precise blood test administered at the police station. Better to just keep yourself well below the legal limit and sail through.
Congress passes all kinds of laws which are later found to be unconstitutional by the court. The ultimate check, in our system, on the congress and president is the judiciary. How would you do it?
By making there be consequences for passing an unconstitutional law, for starters.
They swear to uphold the constitution and then introduce an unconstitutional law... there should be real consequences for this. You know, to give them an incentive not to do it.
I'm not suggesting making it a criminal offense or sending them to federal 'pound me in the ass' prison or anything, but perhaps anyone that sponsors an unconstitutional bill should automatically be removed from congress. ie "fired" and is not eligible to run again, nor serve in any position in government higher than 'X'.
But I would rather have the correct decision after a well reasoned and thought out case, than a quick gut reflex (which is the role the congress usually plays).
If there were real consequences to introducing unconstitutional laws, maybe they'll think a little harder.