Hehe, I can safely say that's the first time I've been accused of being a Microsoft fanboy... I'm much more of a PC gamer than consoles and have never owned Xbox or 360.
I tried to verify your developer's comment however, but I was unable to find any news, interviews, ect. stating that their first games are going over 20gb. All I found was http://games.kikizo.com/news/200602/065_p1.asp a hands on the PS3 which had the comment "Our stuff runs off a Hard Disc at the moment and won't exceed DVD capabilities..." But since its from feburary, I'll let it go under the "too old" pile. Are you sure your not confused with http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2006/06/catching_ up_wit.html Kaz Hirai's interview talking about "If you look at the lack of Blu-ray on Microsoft, what do you do if the game requires 40 to 50 gigabytes? Put it on three disks? Let's look under the hood and see total value we are delivering to consumers. At five to 10 years, you see the lasting power of the PS2. If you go out there now, there is a lot of PS2 software out there. From a consumer's view, who got the better value? If you look at which console is giving the publishers more time to amortize their development costs, the answer is pretty obvious." It seems unlikely that you would confuse potential developments with developer's statements, especially since the number is wrong. I really wish you would tell us where your information comes from.
As a final note, I prefer not to refer to it as a "conspiracy," but rather as "marketing" and I suspect all companies are in on it... *shifts eyes side to side*
Its coming closer, I think we'll be hitting a real saturation point soon, perhaps before even the next console generation is up. There may either be a sort of collapse as the market bloat pops or an explosion onto some new world shaking innovation letting the pressure up. The pressure is coming out of the game's direction themselves. The current direction is unsustainable to allow for enough creativity, but if something can change that direction to something of a second golden era in which creativity can flow (part of which would be a drastic reduction is staffing) we can avoid a terrible implosion of games and a huge set back for the industry as a whole.
I'm going to state the most probable reason and say the games will not take up nearly 25GB, Sony knows this and has decided instead to tout the POTENTIAL size of the games over the actual while saving money by including a hard drive that is suited to the minimum space really needed. In addition, they could do this while believing the games may reach 25GB, thus forcing poeple to buy expensive hard drive upgrades, further increasing profits.
A Nintendo victory would have far reaching implications, well beyond just the console video games market imho. As a former SEGA fanboy (that part of me died the sad day SEGA announced they were leaving hardware) I have no love for Sony; nothing would please me more than to see blue ray fall flat on its face. Nintendo's current position in the 7th generation battle warms the cockles of my heart. As I see it, Sony has a lot riding on the success of the PS3. Significatly, they're main reasoning for including blue ray on the PS3 was to beat out HD DVD in the biggest advantage HD DVD had over blue ray, price point. That means a floundering PS3 hurts blue ray's chances against HD DVD, as well as (coupled with sliding UMD sales and a PSP encountering a far harsher market than expected,) forming as sort of trifecta of interrelated market failings. If demand for blue ray is less than expected, that could easliy translate back to less PS3 sales.
What's better is that this has implications for the other side of HD DVD and Microsoft's game console. We know that Microsoft will offer an HD DVD accessory, and while that may not be sufficient reason to buy an XBox 360, it will be advanced leverage for HD DVD in convincing any current XBox 360 owner to buy the HD DVD accessory over an excessivly expensive stand alone blue ray player or the still more expensive PS3 for its blue ray capabilities; at last count ~1.5million or so people world wide.
What does this have to do with Nintendo? Alot. As we know, Microsoft and Nintendo's systems together are still projected to be cheaper than the PS3 alone. This affects those who would buy as second console most of all. Rather than PS3, persons primarily concerned with gaming may choose Xbox 360 as their second console, adding to the number of persons who would find it logical to buy into HD DVD once they have HDTV (I assume that those concerned with games have a lower probability of owning HDTV than other concerned groups.) A resounding victory for Nintendo could bolster Microsoft sales into or tied with PS3 in second, effectivly neutralizing the blue ray PS3 advantage and instead giving an even better advantage to HD DVD. Even a minor victory could create an deadlocked tied between the three, yet still give some advantage to HD DVD.
Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft are not only the warriors of the next console wars, but indeed key figures in a greater battle unparalleled in its depth compared to any battle before it, that I would call The Great Home Entertainment War!
I would agree that diversity is good, but then I look out there... and all I see is a sea of clones and crap. As I said it is temporary, however, eventually the good will beat out the garbage and the bloat will subside. When that happens, it will be because a few companies really innovated. This is not some final state; the market will bloat out again, copying the successful games and starting the cycle all over again. I guess we're just looking at the same cycle in two different ways.
"'On the downside, even with market growth many companies are likely to struggle to become profitable. A big problem is that the market is becoming more fragmented among different companies, types of products and markets.'"
The problem with fragmenting is a symptom. A symptom of a bloated market, flowing with a variety of games but little true innovation. When you can't differentiate your product through innovative gameplay, your going to struggle. The bright side of this, for us gamers, is that is bloat will equalize itself, kill off the weak product offerings and help facilitate real innovation. That is where the real growth will occure, not more fish in the sea but bigger fish.
Exactly! What American is going to complain about going to war in some country they never heard if none of our soldiers are dieing? Hippies, that's who!
The economy gets a war boost, the government gets to throw its weight around and the only real cost is the death of a bunch of people that aren't American; everybody wins!
Ok, sarcasm aside I do like the idea of robotizing (it's a real word, look it up!) the army as much as we can. Many a great peace-time inventions started as or were sped up by military investment. Think of what a systematizing of something as complex as the military could do for advancements in public and private robotics, AI, or IT!
That seems a bit unneccessary. Kind of like comparing the human brain and an Intel. Now, this is about parallel processing more than speed. The human brain is so powerful because it is composed of trillions of simple (estimated to be comparable to ~200mhz) "processors" in parallel. These are different ways of processing information; they excel in different ways.
Maybe we need a comparison between the PS3 and a human brain...
I think I'll wait on camera games until on-the-fly video enhancement technology catches up. Not that I need it, but there are plenty of people out there that need a little touching up...
Sometimes speech in a game is very nice and fits well. On the DS, though... there are some things that never should speak. I like to compare two of my favorite series that have taked different approaches to speech, game play and other things; Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario. If you ever played Sonic Adventure, you'd probably think twice about having Mario speak beyond a couple 'yahoos.'
Speech needs to be applied with thoughts about other things besides just how real it is. Like Half-Life 2. Would it really be better if Gordon Freeman could reply or give you a list of things to reply with? Does he really need his hands to show up on the car wheel? I don't think so.
I will say that I am both a audiophile and a videophile. I will own UT2K7 and the physics card to make it better. But, I also must have gameplay. I never bought the expansion to Doom 3 because monsters in closets were not fun. I will buy the Wii and Sonic Wild Fire but not the PS3 and Sonic the Hedgehog (the physics one) because as much as I'd love to see HD Eggman and Havok based enemies die, I can already see Wild Fire will be more fun and more like the original.
Better interaction and cooperation with other ai and the player. AI with goals that may make a traitor out of it is a despirate situation. AI that would give your position away because it doesn't want to die. AI that will bargain with its enemies to gain the upperhand, whether its rooting the player out or surviving that encounter. AI that is afraid to die; not just opposed to dieing. Perhaps its too much to ask for AI with a higher set of goal-oriented mental processes, but that's what I want to see.
"...which can be used to probe anything from miniscule samples to industrial materials."
Sure, it starts out that way, but before you know it you've opened up a gateway to another dimesion.
Please, do us all a favor and keep plenty of weapons and ammo around the facility. Oh, and make sure whoever's wearing the hazmat suit has a crowbar with them at all times.
So they are infected with mumps and they cross right over the boarder, right over Texas, right over the south and settle in Iowa? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard! Unless your saying they came in illegally from Canada, in which case that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
Ok, as far as I can tell, the Physx will be PCI atleast at first. I am upgrading my computer soon and I'm trying to leave plenty of room for the future. To that end, I'm looking to get a mobo with 2 PCIe x16 slots (which I am guesstimating would be the slot type the Phyx would use in a future varient, I'll have two other sizes as well but that was unitentional.) But to get a mobo with 2 PCIe x16 slots it comes in the form of an Nvidia SLI mobo. Does anyone know if these SLI capable boards will accept somethign else in the second PCIe x16 slot other than a grfx card, for example a Physx card that uses PCIe x16?
I suppose it's not exactly dire, as the mobo in question also has 3 PCI slots, chosen specifically to be able to hold my current cards plus a transitional PCI Physx... but its good to know these things.
"Finally, according to Nintendo, "the introduction of a number of new franchise properties will add to the world's richest stable of stars, including Mario, Zelda, Super Smash Bros., Donkey Kong and Metroid."
new franchise properties? What? Do they mean, like leasing out characters? Did they buy something?
Maybe it's just the name "Wii" getting to me, but I smell a merger...
Slashdot Mirror
Wow. I really messed up. Lets just try this one more time:
A poll to end all format/console polls!
HD DVD
Blue Ray
PS3
Xbox 360 w/HD DVD
Wii w/ or w/o DVD dongle
Cowboy Neal
A poll to end all format/console polls! HD DVD Blue Ray PS3 Xbox 360 w/HD DVD Wii w/ or w/o DVD dongle Cowboy Neal
Hehe, I can safely say that's the first time I've been accused of being a Microsoft fanboy... I'm much more of a PC gamer than consoles and have never owned Xbox or 360.
_ up_wit.html Kaz Hirai's interview talking about "If you look at the lack of Blu-ray on Microsoft, what do you do if the game requires 40 to 50 gigabytes? Put it on three disks? Let's look under the hood and see total value we are delivering to consumers. At five to 10 years, you see the lasting power of the PS2. If you go out there now, there is a lot of PS2 software out there. From a consumer's view, who got the better value? If you look at which console is giving the publishers more time to amortize their development costs, the answer is pretty obvious." It seems unlikely that you would confuse potential developments with developer's statements, especially since the number is wrong. I really wish you would tell us where your information comes from.
I tried to verify your developer's comment however, but I was unable to find any news, interviews, ect. stating that their first games are going over 20gb. All I found was http://games.kikizo.com/news/200602/065_p1.asp a hands on the PS3 which had the comment "Our stuff runs off a Hard Disc at the moment and won't exceed DVD capabilities..." But since its from feburary, I'll let it go under the "too old" pile. Are you sure your not confused with http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2006/06/catching
As a final note, I prefer not to refer to it as a "conspiracy," but rather as "marketing" and I suspect all companies are in on it... *shifts eyes side to side*
Its coming closer, I think we'll be hitting a real saturation point soon, perhaps before even the next console generation is up. There may either be a sort of collapse as the market bloat pops or an explosion onto some new world shaking innovation letting the pressure up. The pressure is coming out of the game's direction themselves. The current direction is unsustainable to allow for enough creativity, but if something can change that direction to something of a second golden era in which creativity can flow (part of which would be a drastic reduction is staffing) we can avoid a terrible implosion of games and a huge set back for the industry as a whole.
I'm going to state the most probable reason and say the games will not take up nearly 25GB, Sony knows this and has decided instead to tout the POTENTIAL size of the games over the actual while saving money by including a hard drive that is suited to the minimum space really needed. In addition, they could do this while believing the games may reach 25GB, thus forcing poeple to buy expensive hard drive upgrades, further increasing profits.
A Nintendo victory would have far reaching implications, well beyond just the console video games market imho. As a former SEGA fanboy (that part of me died the sad day SEGA announced they were leaving hardware) I have no love for Sony; nothing would please me more than to see blue ray fall flat on its face. Nintendo's current position in the 7th generation battle warms the cockles of my heart. As I see it, Sony has a lot riding on the success of the PS3. Significatly, they're main reasoning for including blue ray on the PS3 was to beat out HD DVD in the biggest advantage HD DVD had over blue ray, price point. That means a floundering PS3 hurts blue ray's chances against HD DVD, as well as (coupled with sliding UMD sales and a PSP encountering a far harsher market than expected,) forming as sort of trifecta of interrelated market failings. If demand for blue ray is less than expected, that could easliy translate back to less PS3 sales.
What's better is that this has implications for the other side of HD DVD and Microsoft's game console. We know that Microsoft will offer an HD DVD accessory, and while that may not be sufficient reason to buy an XBox 360, it will be advanced leverage for HD DVD in convincing any current XBox 360 owner to buy the HD DVD accessory over an excessivly expensive stand alone blue ray player or the still more expensive PS3 for its blue ray capabilities; at last count ~1.5million or so people world wide.
What does this have to do with Nintendo? Alot. As we know, Microsoft and Nintendo's systems together are still projected to be cheaper than the PS3 alone. This affects those who would buy as second console most of all. Rather than PS3, persons primarily concerned with gaming may choose Xbox 360 as their second console, adding to the number of persons who would find it logical to buy into HD DVD once they have HDTV (I assume that those concerned with games have a lower probability of owning HDTV than other concerned groups.) A resounding victory for Nintendo could bolster Microsoft sales into or tied with PS3 in second, effectivly neutralizing the blue ray PS3 advantage and instead giving an even better advantage to HD DVD. Even a minor victory could create an deadlocked tied between the three, yet still give some advantage to HD DVD.
Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft are not only the warriors of the next console wars, but indeed key figures in a greater battle unparalleled in its depth compared to any battle before it, that I would call The Great Home Entertainment War!
I would agree that diversity is good, but then I look out there... and all I see is a sea of clones and crap. As I said it is temporary, however, eventually the good will beat out the garbage and the bloat will subside. When that happens, it will be because a few companies really innovated. This is not some final state; the market will bloat out again, copying the successful games and starting the cycle all over again. I guess we're just looking at the same cycle in two different ways.
"'On the downside, even with market growth many companies are likely to struggle to become profitable. A big problem is that the market is becoming more fragmented among different companies, types of products and markets.'"
The problem with fragmenting is a symptom. A symptom of a bloated market, flowing with a variety of games but little true innovation. When you can't differentiate your product through innovative gameplay, your going to struggle. The bright side of this, for us gamers, is that is bloat will equalize itself, kill off the weak product offerings and help facilitate real innovation. That is where the real growth will occure, not more fish in the sea but bigger fish.
Exactly! What American is going to complain about going to war in some country they never heard if none of our soldiers are dieing? Hippies, that's who!
The economy gets a war boost, the government gets to throw its weight around and the only real cost is the death of a bunch of people that aren't American; everybody wins!
Ok, sarcasm aside I do like the idea of robotizing (it's a real word, look it up!) the army as much as we can. Many a great peace-time inventions started as or were sped up by military investment. Think of what a systematizing of something as complex as the military could do for advancements in public and private robotics, AI, or IT!
That seems a bit unneccessary. Kind of like comparing the human brain and an Intel. Now, this is about parallel processing more than speed. The human brain is so powerful because it is composed of trillions of simple (estimated to be comparable to ~200mhz) "processors" in parallel. These are different ways of processing information; they excel in different ways.
e rful_as_Human_Brain.html
Maybe we need a comparison between the PS3 and a human brain...
http://www.ps3411.com/show/news/12/0/PS3_1_as_Pow
No listing for Team Fortress 2 among their future plans. Atleast I still have DNF to look forward to.
Seconded. Its a very nice look; very well proportioned. It looks really... umm, sharp! Seriously, it looks like i'll get a computer cut from it.
I think I'll wait on camera games until on-the-fly video enhancement technology catches up. Not that I need it, but there are plenty of people out there that need a little touching up...
God bless the idiot-proof airforce!
--Sideshow Bob
Actually, he didn't really leave. He was "elevated," promoted if you will, to chairman and CEO.
Sometimes speech in a game is very nice and fits well. On the DS, though... there are some things that never should speak. I like to compare two of my favorite series that have taked different approaches to speech, game play and other things; Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario. If you ever played Sonic Adventure, you'd probably think twice about having Mario speak beyond a couple 'yahoos.'
Speech needs to be applied with thoughts about other things besides just how real it is. Like Half-Life 2. Would it really be better if Gordon Freeman could reply or give you a list of things to reply with? Does he really need his hands to show up on the car wheel? I don't think so.
I will say that I am both a audiophile and a videophile. I will own UT2K7 and the physics card to make it better. But, I also must have gameplay. I never bought the expansion to Doom 3 because monsters in closets were not fun. I will buy the Wii and Sonic Wild Fire but not the PS3 and Sonic the Hedgehog (the physics one) because as much as I'd love to see HD Eggman and Havok based enemies die, I can already see Wild Fire will be more fun and more like the original.
Just for the record, I still like playing pong. I have no interest in http://www.rockstargames.com/tabletennisTable Tennis
I concur!
Better interaction and cooperation with other ai and the player. AI with goals that may make a traitor out of it is a despirate situation. AI that would give your position away because it doesn't want to die. AI that will bargain with its enemies to gain the upperhand, whether its rooting the player out or surviving that encounter. AI that is afraid to die; not just opposed to dieing. Perhaps its too much to ask for AI with a higher set of goal-oriented mental processes, but that's what I want to see.
Sounds like a great pinball machine simulator! Great for Monkeyball, or Starfox perhaps.
If I could, I would mod this up. Thanks for the great new comic to read!
"...which can be used to probe anything from miniscule samples to industrial materials."
Sure, it starts out that way, but before you know it you've opened up a gateway to another dimesion.
Please, do us all a favor and keep plenty of weapons and ammo around the facility. Oh, and make sure whoever's wearing the hazmat suit has a crowbar with them at all times.
So they are infected with mumps and they cross right over the boarder, right over Texas, right over the south and settle in Iowa? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard! Unless your saying they came in illegally from Canada, in which case that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
Ok, as far as I can tell, the Physx will be PCI atleast at first. I am upgrading my computer soon and I'm trying to leave plenty of room for the future. To that end, I'm looking to get a mobo with 2 PCIe x16 slots (which I am guesstimating would be the slot type the Phyx would use in a future varient, I'll have two other sizes as well but that was unitentional.) But to get a mobo with 2 PCIe x16 slots it comes in the form of an Nvidia SLI mobo. Does anyone know if these SLI capable boards will accept somethign else in the second PCIe x16 slot other than a grfx card, for example a Physx card that uses PCIe x16?
I suppose it's not exactly dire, as the mobo in question also has 3 PCI slots, chosen specifically to be able to hold my current cards plus a transitional PCI Physx... but its good to know these things.
Wally: Voice command, huh? That's neat. Gee, It be a shame if you accidently DELETE! FILE! before you saved.
"Finally, according to Nintendo, "the introduction of a number of new franchise properties will add to the world's richest stable of stars, including Mario, Zelda, Super Smash Bros., Donkey Kong and Metroid."
new franchise properties? What? Do they mean, like leasing out characters? Did they buy something?
Maybe it's just the name "Wii" getting to me, but I smell a merger...