"A full recovery never happens, except in movies. People don't just wake up from a coma. The damage affects them for the rest of their lives. After 19 years, the person you knew would be a stranger to you anyway, and there's not much of that person left."
I've seen this man on television a year or two ago. (This was before the recovery this article is talking about.) His speech was slurred rather badly and he had trouble putting sentences together. I first read about him on Slashdot and thought "Wow, this guy's going to hear about 20 years of world events for the first time. He's going to hear about the internet and cell phones and DVDs and all that other neat stuff." I was actually envious of him in a superficial way. (What can I say? My imagination got the better of me!) When I saw him on TV, all that optimism died. I really didn't feel like any of this could be explained to him in a way that would make much sense to him. Like you said, he wasn't asleep all these years, he was severly brain damaged.
I wish him a good recovery, but I think you're right.
Moore's law plays the biggest part in this. I don't think Sony thought the PS3 would be released in spring. I think they said this to take the wind out of microsofts launch sails. I think they always knew it would be delayed until November.
Niether of us has anything to offer other than speculation on this matter. Personally, I don't think it's true. I think Sony planned all along on releasing in Spring so not to give Microsoft such a lead. I'd even be willing to bet that they were over-enthusiastic in thinking they could get it down to a reasonable price. Oopsie. Like I said, though, speculation.
As for Moore's Law: It's not realy a law. There's no strange bizarre quirk of physics that causes processor speeds to double. It's a marketing goal for companies like Intel. Not that it matters much, anyway. There are so many places for a system to bottleneck that we just cannot have this discussion until the PS3 is released. In the mean time, what Sony's shown us has offered us little reason to think it's much above the 360.
Your flat out wrong it's running a linux based operating system.
The PS3 is running Linux so you can do your photo manipulating and web browsing stuff. Unless you can point me at a site that says otherwise, nothing's been said about the games actually running on Linux. If you care to point me in the right direction, I'll be happy to retract that point and apologize for the error. (I'd rather learn than argue.) The same used to be said about the Dreamcast. Everybody thought all the games were written for WIndows CE. No. SOME of the games were made for WinCE, the DC booted into whatever OS the disc had aboard.
Before falling into the graphics contest trap sony was touting the physics capability of the cell. It was stated over and over in thier press releases of the cell....I think the reason why they've went the way of touting the graphics is because it might be a little hard to implement in 1st gen games. It's also hard to show someone physics when all they have is to look at magazine and internet pics. This is also one of IBM's stated intrests in the cell proccessor. Also there would be no problem with online gaming. Most chunks would be no more than window dressing anyway and any pieces that would turn into something useful would be scripted as they are now. It could also simply be turned off for online play as well.
All I've seen is a lot of hooplah over using the Havok engine with some games. If it doesn't do much for on-line play, though, I'm not sure where your faith in it really lies. Maybe I'm over zealous in that point, but I think most people would care more about multi-player than single-player with lots of physics. Again, speculation.
What are you talking about what games are you playing? Aside from the GTAs, spiderman, and hulk I can't think of any game that has eliminated loading......even still you have a long initial load time on these games. While I'd love to see every game be free roam most are still level based. Tombraider legend, prince of persia, the list goes on....and on and on....Again dvd storage limits were stated in early sony and developer press releases.
I've read the term 'streaming' ad-nauseum in the previews of games coming out. Whether they manage to do it or not is a different question. As for storage limits: That's fine and all, but we're having trouble getting DVDs filled today. The speed of the drive has always been the limitation. The 360 actually has an edge over the PS3 in this regard.
Did you miss the words could and may? That's called speculation. There's no market for linux gaming because no new games also come out for linux. I don't know anyone that's unwilling to save the $200 windows costs. I don't see what type of graphics chip would have to do with anything as Microsofts crossplatforming doesn't seem to have a
Did you play the same GTA everyone else did? What was so difficult about the controls? Target, shoot, then cycle through your enemies with the L,R buttons until they were all dead.
That's a gross over-simplification of the play mechanics in these games. One of the things you could do in the PC versions of GTA was to shoot out tires in moving cars. Heck, you could even kill the drivers in moving cars with ease. This mechanic is virtually gone in the console versions and takes some of the fun out of the games. In San Andreas, when you're in a gang war, the too-easy targetting was more of a hinderance than a help. It was a lot more frantic, and frankly, the targeting was sometimes dumb, trying to shoot through buildings etc. (If you were on a roof-top looking down trying to make a kill.. forget it, you were stuck with the analog stick, and it was way too sensitive.) The targeting in these games was either way too easy or way too hard with little room in-between.
There were several missions in San Andreas that called for too many restarts because of the f'd up targeting system. It's one thing for a game to be difficult because it requires skill, it's something else entirely to be difficult because the controller's getting in your way.
GTA 3 was kind of fun. They all were. Driving around is fun, and I liked the radio and such. The driving controls weren't that great but they worked and that may even be one of the reasons why they were fun. But the rest of the game just SUFFERS. I know there is supposed to be a great story and tons of missions, and I've played some of them. But the shooting/targeting/aiming controlls have been abysmal.
Though I'm a raving GTA fan boy, I don't consider this sacrilege. You bring up good points. One thing I'd mention, though, is that it's fairly clear that you played this on the PS2 and not the PC. I played GTA3 and Vice City on the PC. Though the driving suffered a little, it made the targetting problem a LOT better. When I played San Andreas, well it was on the PS2, and frankly this change in perspective illuminated your points quite clearly. I don't think any GTA fan out there who's being honest with himself could tell you that those problems don't exist. As a matter of fact, San Andreas is the EXACT reason I will not be getting a PS3. I do NOT want to go through this control-hell again. I cannot BELIEVE that they did the exact same controller again. It's not right.
"I've posed this before. What's the response I usually get? "Try the games on the PC!". So the solution to bad controls on a console is a port that they made later? If they can't get it right on a console (where I can at least rent it) then why should I shell out money for the PC version?"
Err.. I'm sorry... I wrote the previous paragraph before reading this line. I was heading towards 'try it on the PC!' Well, should you? I cannot promise you that you'd love these games anywhere near as much as I did. I really don't know anything about your tastes other than you liked Zelda. I can sympathize, there. I can tell you that the targeting problem is a LOT better on the PC versions. Perfect? No. You're not going to get Zelda's top-notch control here. But it's still good, and yes, the games are rewarding. The mouse is FAR better for taking shots with. I would suggest that if you can find Vice City for $15, it'd be a good gamble for you. (Though GTA 3 was good, Vice City was considerably better, and that one may actually convince you to give SA a try. I don't imagine you taking the leap from GTA3 to SA...) If you balk at paying $15 (I don't even know if you can find it that cheap... but it's the amount I'd pay to try something recommended.) then let it go. S'alright, man. Even though I think these games are great, I get the impression from your post you did give them a serious try. GTA did earn its spot in gaming history, even before the Hot Coffee pitchfork party.
" The graphics for the PS3 are only going to be twice as good as the xbox 360 yes..."
I can't wait until the PS3 is released so we can find this out. So far, all indications are pointing to this not being true.
" It is going to be able to do some 30,000 physical interactions on the screen at one time. That means when your greneade hits a wall the wall will blow apart, chunks will go everywhere. This means no more hiding behind wood crates for cover from high caliber machinegun fire. Computers are heading in this direction now....sony decided to jump on the bandwagon with physics NOW rather than waiting for the next round of consoles."
Funny, you'd think Sony would be bragging about this left and right. I imagine they aren't though, because this is BS. Even if the system could do this, and I mean 'do this' in the sense that it is practical for games, one has to ask how it will work in a multi-player environment. If the games are in sync (i.e. on a LAN or split-screen) it shouldn't be a big deal. However, on the net, not only are the games not in sync, but they're also running on low-bandwidth connections. Suppose your PS3 registers a hit and makes 30k calculations about where the debris go. Will the other systems register the same change? Unlikely. The other systems have the characters in different positions with a whole 150 millliseconds for change. It'd be possible for one the machines to play host to the debris, but then it'd have to send out the co-ords and vectors for each of the elements flying aorund, easily eating up the out-bound pipe.
I doubt this is an unsolvable problem. Combine a few cheats with a few nips and tucks and you might be able to trade-off enough to make this work. But then how does it compare to the XBOX 360?
I think it's all academic, anyway. Sony needed to show that it could do what the other systems couldn't, and they didn't say anything about this.
"Developers said they had hit the limits of dvds without using crippling compression technology, compression is the main contributer to load times."
Bullshit. There may have been some truth to this in the PS1 days with its whopping 33mhz processor. But even the PS2 had sufficient processing power to imbalance this theory. It's laughable to think that Sony used Blu-Ray to keep the developers happy. If anything, the developers want faster random-access. The modern trend is to stream the levels into the game without that annoying 'Loading...' screen coming up. This takes some work to order the data efficiently on the disc. Burst rate would likely help to a degree, but if they had faster acess to the disc, they'd have less trouble organizing the assets. I'm sure developers would love to not have to deal with compression, but for load times? Nope.
"Just like the dvd to vhs switch you are not going to have a choice the studios will simply stop releasing movies on dvds."
Um, no they won't. They'll keep selling DVDs as long as people keep buying them. Supply and Demand. They won't just suddenly switch. Heck, you can still buy VHS's of new movies today. I'll give you partial credit, though, if you're thinking about Laser Disc. It died a rather sudden death after the DVD. You should consider, though, that DVD had almost all of the superiority, AND LD didn't have a massive user base. The business decision to stop supporting it made a lot more sense. But, no, the MPAA is not stupid enough to cut off DVDs. They love money just a little too much.
"If you watch a regular dvd on an hd tv it looks grainy as hell...."
Blurry, maybe, but not grainy. I've heard a number of comments on here, though, from people who have nice up-sampling DVD players. They say it looks pretty good. Meanwhile, both forms of HD DVD are suffering from 'so what?' with the early reviews. Again, I'll give you partial credit: DVDs had the same problem. It'll take a year or two before the high-def DVDs are encoded properly.
"Nintendo is still for the kiddies. They have gimmicky controllers with a Fisher-Price look and feel."
They have intuitive controls with an iPod'esque look and feel.
"Nintendo focuses on twitch games that generally skip story altogether, or have some bizarre Japanese theme that most adults can't figure out."
Nintendo focuses on fun-games. Sometimes, landing a series of jumps is more satisfying than shooting a zombie in the head and blood gushing out.
"Geeks, please don't respond that you love Nintendo... we all know that many of you don't care about things like story. I'm talking about MOST adults."
You're not even representing them very well. MOST adults don't have time to dick around with a confusing controller and 'adult-themes' catered to young teenagers. MOST adults WORK for a living. They come home, they want to relax. They want to play something simple and fun. That is, of course, assuming that games are even on these adults radar. What YOU are describing, is another geek clique.
I know where you're coming from. I've got my feet on both sides of the fence. I love Nintendo's offerings, but I enjoy a good 'adult' (I hate using this term. I'll talk more about that in a minute.) long game involving a story. I loved San Andreas. I enjoyed every minute of it. In that case, yes, it was the story I was after. I can nearly say the same for Resident Evil 4. Not as strong in the story department, but excellent presentation. The problem, though, is that I had to MAKE time to play these games. And for what? Well, sure, there was a bit of a story. It only took... oh.. 40 hours or so to get this story through. If it weren't for the more-or-less satisfying game play in between, it would have been a total bust. Even then, in both cases, it was quite formulaic. Walk around, shoot, go to point b, shoot again, rinse, repeat. This is why I have trouble calling this 'adult'. There's nothing adult about it. My 11 year old sister could play these games just as well as I could. The only thing 'adult' about it is San Andreas uses strong language and RE4 sprays blood all over the place. Adult, to me, means something I'd enjoy more now than I would have 10 years ago. This isn't the case at all. These games would have been far more interseting to me 10 years ago.
You talk about 25+ year olds with disposable income. I qualify quite neatly into that demographic. But the time investment just isn't something that I'm willing to plunk down hundreds of dollars for. I barely have time to sneak a DVD in during the week. That's why, even though I loved the 'adult' games, the games I've put the most time into recently are Tetris DS, Mario Kart DS, and Brain Age. I can pick them up, play them for a short amount of time, and put them down again until tomorrow. And you wanna know something? This is why Nintendo has been successful. There are, however, 'adult' gamers that have more of this time to invest. This is why I mentioned you belonging to another clique earlier. It wasn't to be insulting. It was to point out that this isn't just a matter of disposable income, it's a matter of time investment, lifestyle, and priorities. You weren't necessarily modded down for going against popular opinion. (That happens all the time here on Slashdot, I can certainly tell you war stories about that.) You are just as likely to have been modded down for not getting what others are seeing. I don't think it's fair that you were modded down. Afterall, I think you're making points that will appeal to some. What you've said is certainly something to think about. But you just had to throw in what 'MOST adults' want. Too broad of generalization. Sorry.
"Hey Zonk, I would like to ask you to stop accepting non-informative nieuws on how Playstation 3 is going to fail and how much it sucks for a change!"
Normally I'd stand with you, but in this particular case I'm glad Zonk's doing this. Sony still has some time to make changes before launch. If they finally get the hint that the media isn't going to go along with them, then maybe, just maybe, they'll do something right.
I'm curious just how 'massive' these are. Maybe I'm just not in tune with the XBOX 360 community, but those complaints seem to have died down. Corrections invited.
"Shitty graphics that are getting laughed at by pc reviewers."
When has this NOT been the case? Heh. PCs have more up-to-date hardware. The graphics will ALWAYS be better. In any event, you're in for some sad news: The PS3's graphics aren't going to be much better.
"All the talk about Nintendo changing the gaming world with the Wii now sounds silly with a machine that has crappy graphics like the 360 and a pointing device. So you swing swords in some games and you point at stuff in others. Ok."
Nintendo's coming out with a more intuitive control while you're stuck trying to play shooter games on the other two systems with an analog stick. It'll also be a LOT cheaper than the other two consoles. It's like picking the DS over the PSP.
"Where are all of these 'innovative' Wii games that are going to make millions of people who have never bought a console before rush out and buy a Wii?"
You can ask Sony the same question. Hardly relevent now, anyway. The system's not out, Nintendo's tight-lipped.
"If if the PS3 didn't play games it would probably still outsell both the Wii and effectively dead in the market 360 now that both HD-DVD and the image constraint token have died."
ICT hasn't died. It has taken a little break. HD-DVD hasn't died, either.
"For $499 you get a 1080p BluRay movie player to go with the dropping like a rock in price 1080p TV sets.""And you get 1080p games."
Goodie. You get the same graphics you had in the previous generation only at higher resolution. Wee. That'll just be a whole new level of fun for all of those sequels.
"And you backwards compatibility with virtually every PS1 and PS2 game you already own."
Yep. They're cramming a PS2 into a PS3 so you can play all those games. At your expense, of course. Gee, maybe I'll trade in my PS2 and get $50 off the $600 PS3 so I can play my existing library of games and a few high-res ones. I just hope they'll offer a system where you can have access to a 20-year library of classic games. Wouldn't that be neat?
"And you can webbrowse and other stuff right from your PS2."
Joy!! That'll be SO much better than the PC you're already using to post this!
"And you get free online gaming - unlike the 200-250 dollars Microsoft forces you to pay just to play online."
Yeah! Just like Nintendo's doing with the Wii and the DS! Go Sony!!
"The Wii and PS3 will go head to head in Japan, and the PS3 will still dominate in the US and Europe."
Oh, I agree with you, there. I'm sure 10's of millions of people in the USA and Europe are going to drop $600 on the PS3 just as soon as it launches.
"Nintendo really needs to show gamers something wild before launch..."
Hmm.. odd... I thought you had posted this in April or something. Did you hear of that little show called E3?
"...because all that good will they generated over the first half of 2006 is slipping away as gamers are seeing how bad Wii games look."
Really? Where are you getting this from? Every time Sony boasts about the PS3, it becomes a laugh-at-Sony party. Meanwhile, the DS is roughly the equivalent of the N64, and it's beating the equivalent-to-PS2 PSP. It seems pretty darned clear to me that the gamers have said "Enough, we want fun games."
"Every single system selling exclusive Sony had that got them 105+ million PS2 sales is on the PS3..."
Um... so? Who's going to buy a PS3 to play the game they've already played? The PS3 needs new games. Unfortunately, they've set up the hardware and the controls to play the same old crap we've already played sequels of.
Seriously man, your rationale's shot. The only real saving grace here is that Sony still hasn't laid down all their cards. They made huge asses of themeselves at E3, maybe that'll drive them to do something drastic. Right now, the PS3's not looking good at all.
"By RAW SPECS: Genesis was stronger than the SNES,"
Small nitpick: The Genesis had a faster main processor. It ran at 7mhz while the SNES ran at a little under 4. The SNES had a graphic chip built in that wiped the floor with the Genesis GFX-wise. The end result was that the SNES's graphics were a lot better than the Genesis'. I don't think this affects your point too much, though, because Nintendo had a terrible time fighting against Sega in that round. Sega had the less powerful machine, but still managed to hold on to market share. In the end, Nintendo (and its 3rd parties...) cranked out the games for the win.
You should have mentioned the original Game Boy. That little 8-bit, 1mhz, grayscale system killed the Game Gear, Lynx, and Nomad. Well.. I'm being a little dramatic. It's not clear that any of those systems would have survived if the GB hadn't been around.
"In terms of human lives, terrorism in America isn't even a blip on the radar."
Small nitpick: 9/11 severely messed up the economy for a while, at least a lot more than murders and suicides. Whether that realistically justifies the money poured into Homeland Security is up for somebody else to debate, I'm not defending it. I'm just pointing out that terrorism has more consequences than just killing people. That's why the term terrorism is used in place of mass-murder.
"The whole "by invite only" thing was a joke really, when you consider how easy it was to get an invite."
It was a clever viral marketing gimmick. All those 'invites in sigs' things you mentioned got people asking "What is GMail?" At least, that's how I ended up using it. Otherwise I would have said "pftbptbptbpt another web mail."
"...and so that you can be tracked. Big Brother is watching you."
Yeah. Big Brother is watching you take a photo of Carl's Jr.. Afterall, those little numbers a GPS unit spits out are useless without a photo to attach to them.
"Who is going to pay for an Internet connection on a really long flight when their laptop battery can't carry a charge long enough to use it all the way?"
There's already a large group of customers that bring their less-than-flight-battery-life laptops on planes every day. It's not ideal, but I can already think of a few people (including myself) who, at the very least, would give it a good hard look. You have to remember that people have been bringing their less-than-flight-duration-laptops on planes for years as it is.
"Games, as they are now, are generally horrible. It's a lot like Hollywood nowadays, not just because of movie frenchise games, but also because it costs millions of dollars to just make a game, and then nobody wants to take their chances on a game that is less likely to sell (i.e. isn't really mainstream) so they release pretty much ONLY first person shooters."
I sometimes wish I had a time machine. I'd love to pop back about 15 years and take a look at both Hollywood and the video game market and see if the idea that both industries have gotten worse is really true. I was a teenager back in the 16-bit days so I know my percpetions are different. (Just to illustrate: I saw Volcano when I was... oh.. 17 or so. I loved it. I watched it again on TV recently and ARGH that movie was terrible!)
What really inspired me to respond to your post was the comment about only FPS shooters being made. Back in the 16-bit days, it was fighters. Lots and lots and lots and lots of TERRIBLE Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat wannabes. My favorite example of just how bad it got was Rise of the Robots. Not only did this game try to capitalize on the fighting fad, but it also tried to jump on the CGI bandwagon. They didn't get either right.
Anyway, the point isn't to say that Hollywood and VGs aren't worse today. Rather, I'm just curious if they really are or not. I've read a number of Calvin and Hobbes' cartoons taking pokes at Hollywood sequels. Seems like the same old gripe, just a different decade. Just look at Police Academy. Argh.
"Oh, and SE is 'Second Edition', not 'Special Edition'. Believe me, there was nothing special about it."
That was my lame attempt at a joke. Heh.
A thought struck me about the boot time. I wonder if you had extra services running in Second Edition that required more RAM...? I tried booting 2000 Server on a machine wih 96 megs of RAM and it took roughly 10 mins to boot...
"I have it running on the hd of a PII 350mhz machine with a joke of a video card and only 64mb ram, and it will fly. Takes no longer than a minute to boot. Win98SE, on the same PC, took 5-10 minutes just to get to the login screen."
Really? Years ago, I had a P2 350 with 64 meg of RAM and Windows 98. (not Special Edition. If it has a 'boot slower' feature, I'd be interested to hear about it...) That didn't take 10 minutes to boot. Maybe 2, but nowhere near 10. If it did, I would have switched to NT far earlier than I did.
I was asking out of personal interest, not out of some desire to shoot it down. I hope the developers don't share your attitude, though. It's not like it's a super hard feature to write.
So: * Bill&Melinda tossed $37 billion in Windows licenses into schools * I did some minor contributions to the system of promoting programming in Poland's high schools
"To maintain its status as a charitable foundation, it must donate at least 5% of its assets each year. Thus the donations from the foundation each year would amount to over $1 billion at a minimum."
Slashdot Mirror
"A full recovery never happens, except in movies. People don't just wake up from a coma. The damage affects them for the rest of their lives. After 19 years, the person you knew would be a stranger to you anyway, and there's not much of that person left."
I've seen this man on television a year or two ago. (This was before the recovery this article is talking about.) His speech was slurred rather badly and he had trouble putting sentences together. I first read about him on Slashdot and thought "Wow, this guy's going to hear about 20 years of world events for the first time. He's going to hear about the internet and cell phones and DVDs and all that other neat stuff." I was actually envious of him in a superficial way. (What can I say? My imagination got the better of me!) When I saw him on TV, all that optimism died. I really didn't feel like any of this could be explained to him in a way that would make much sense to him. Like you said, he wasn't asleep all these years, he was severly brain damaged.
I wish him a good recovery, but I think you're right.
Niether of us has anything to offer other than speculation on this matter. Personally, I don't think it's true. I think Sony planned all along on releasing in Spring so not to give Microsoft such a lead. I'd even be willing to bet that they were over-enthusiastic in thinking they could get it down to a reasonable price. Oopsie. Like I said, though, speculation.
As for Moore's Law: It's not realy a law. There's no strange bizarre quirk of physics that causes processor speeds to double. It's a marketing goal for companies like Intel. Not that it matters much, anyway. There are so many places for a system to bottleneck that we just cannot have this discussion until the PS3 is released. In the mean time, what Sony's shown us has offered us little reason to think it's much above the 360.
The PS3 is running Linux so you can do your photo manipulating and web browsing stuff. Unless you can point me at a site that says otherwise, nothing's been said about the games actually running on Linux. If you care to point me in the right direction, I'll be happy to retract that point and apologize for the error. (I'd rather learn than argue.) The same used to be said about the Dreamcast. Everybody thought all the games were written for WIndows CE. No. SOME of the games were made for WinCE, the DC booted into whatever OS the disc had aboard.
All I've seen is a lot of hooplah over using the Havok engine with some games. If it doesn't do much for on-line play, though, I'm not sure where your faith in it really lies. Maybe I'm over zealous in that point, but I think most people would care more about multi-player than single-player with lots of physics. Again, speculation.
I've read the term 'streaming' ad-nauseum in the previews of games coming out. Whether they manage to do it or not is a different question. As for storage limits: That's fine and all, but we're having trouble getting DVDs filled today. The speed of the drive has always been the limitation. The 360 actually has an edge over the PS3 in this regard.
That's a gross over-simplification of the play mechanics in these games. One of the things you could do in the PC versions of GTA was to shoot out tires in moving cars. Heck, you could even kill the drivers in moving cars with ease. This mechanic is virtually gone in the console versions and takes some of the fun out of the games. In San Andreas, when you're in a gang war, the too-easy targetting was more of a hinderance than a help. It was a lot more frantic, and frankly, the targeting was sometimes dumb, trying to shoot through buildings etc. (If you were on a roof-top looking down trying to make a kill.. forget it, you were stuck with the analog stick, and it was way too sensitive.) The targeting in these games was either way too easy or way too hard with little room in-between.
There were several missions in San Andreas that called for too many restarts because of the f'd up targeting system. It's one thing for a game to be difficult because it requires skill, it's something else entirely to be difficult because the controller's getting in your way.
Though I'm a raving GTA fan boy, I don't consider this sacrilege. You bring up good points. One thing I'd mention, though, is that it's fairly clear that you played this on the PS2 and not the PC. I played GTA3 and Vice City on the PC. Though the driving suffered a little, it made the targetting problem a LOT better. When I played San Andreas, well it was on the PS2, and frankly this change in perspective illuminated your points quite clearly. I don't think any GTA fan out there who's being honest with himself could tell you that those problems don't exist. As a matter of fact, San Andreas is the EXACT reason I will not be getting a PS3. I do NOT want to go through this control-hell again. I cannot BELIEVE that they did the exact same controller again. It's not right.
"I've posed this before. What's the response I usually get? "Try the games on the PC!". So the solution to bad controls on a console is a port that they made later? If they can't get it right on a console (where I can at least rent it) then why should I shell out money for the PC version?"
Err.. I'm sorry... I wrote the previous paragraph before reading this line. I was heading towards 'try it on the PC!' Well, should you? I cannot promise you that you'd love these games anywhere near as much as I did. I really don't know anything about your tastes other than you liked Zelda. I can sympathize, there. I can tell you that the targeting problem is a LOT better on the PC versions. Perfect? No. You're not going to get Zelda's top-notch control here. But it's still good, and yes, the games are rewarding. The mouse is FAR better for taking shots with. I would suggest that if you can find Vice City for $15, it'd be a good gamble for you. (Though GTA 3 was good, Vice City was considerably better, and that one may actually convince you to give SA a try. I don't imagine you taking the leap from GTA3 to SA...) If you balk at paying $15 (I don't even know if you can find it that cheap... but it's the amount I'd pay to try something recommended.) then let it go. S'alright, man. Even though I think these games are great, I get the impression from your post you did give them a serious try. GTA did earn its spot in gaming history, even before the Hot Coffee pitchfork party.
" The graphics for the PS3 are only going to be twice as good as the xbox 360 yes..."
I can't wait until the PS3 is released so we can find this out. So far, all indications are pointing to this not being true.
" It is going to be able to do some 30,000 physical interactions on the screen at one time. That means when your greneade hits a wall the wall will blow apart, chunks will go everywhere. This means no more hiding behind wood crates for cover from high caliber machinegun fire. Computers are heading in this direction now....sony decided to jump on the bandwagon with physics NOW rather than waiting for the next round of consoles."
Funny, you'd think Sony would be bragging about this left and right. I imagine they aren't though, because this is BS. Even if the system could do this, and I mean 'do this' in the sense that it is practical for games, one has to ask how it will work in a multi-player environment. If the games are in sync (i.e. on a LAN or split-screen) it shouldn't be a big deal. However, on the net, not only are the games not in sync, but they're also running on low-bandwidth connections. Suppose your PS3 registers a hit and makes 30k calculations about where the debris go. Will the other systems register the same change? Unlikely. The other systems have the characters in different positions with a whole 150 millliseconds for change. It'd be possible for one the machines to play host to the debris, but then it'd have to send out the co-ords and vectors for each of the elements flying aorund, easily eating up the out-bound pipe.
I doubt this is an unsolvable problem. Combine a few cheats with a few nips and tucks and you might be able to trade-off enough to make this work. But then how does it compare to the XBOX 360?
I think it's all academic, anyway. Sony needed to show that it could do what the other systems couldn't, and they didn't say anything about this.
"Developers said they had hit the limits of dvds without using crippling compression technology, compression is the main contributer to load times."
Bullshit. There may have been some truth to this in the PS1 days with its whopping 33mhz processor. But even the PS2 had sufficient processing power to imbalance this theory. It's laughable to think that Sony used Blu-Ray to keep the developers happy. If anything, the developers want faster random-access. The modern trend is to stream the levels into the game without that annoying 'Loading...' screen coming up. This takes some work to order the data efficiently on the disc. Burst rate would likely help to a degree, but if they had faster acess to the disc, they'd have less trouble organizing the assets. I'm sure developers would love to not have to deal with compression, but for load times? Nope.
"Just like the dvd to vhs switch you are not going to have a choice the studios will simply stop releasing movies on dvds."
Um, no they won't. They'll keep selling DVDs as long as people keep buying them. Supply and Demand. They won't just suddenly switch. Heck, you can still buy VHS's of new movies today. I'll give you partial credit, though, if you're thinking about Laser Disc. It died a rather sudden death after the DVD. You should consider, though, that DVD had almost all of the superiority, AND LD didn't have a massive user base. The business decision to stop supporting it made a lot more sense. But, no, the MPAA is not stupid enough to cut off DVDs. They love money just a little too much.
"If you watch a regular dvd on an hd tv it looks grainy as hell...."
Blurry, maybe, but not grainy. I've heard a number of comments on here, though, from people who have nice up-sampling DVD players. They say it looks pretty good. Meanwhile, both forms of HD DVD are suffering from 'so what?' with the early reviews. Again, I'll give you partial credit: DVDs had the same problem. It'll take a year or two before the high-def DVDs are encoded properly.
"One mor
"Nintendo is still for the kiddies. They have gimmicky controllers with a Fisher-Price look and feel."
... oh.. 40 hours or so to get this story through. If it weren't for the more-or-less satisfying game play in between, it would have been a total bust. Even then, in both cases, it was quite formulaic. Walk around, shoot, go to point b, shoot again, rinse, repeat. This is why I have trouble calling this 'adult'. There's nothing adult about it. My 11 year old sister could play these games just as well as I could. The only thing 'adult' about it is San Andreas uses strong language and RE4 sprays blood all over the place. Adult, to me, means something I'd enjoy more now than I would have 10 years ago. This isn't the case at all. These games would have been far more interseting to me 10 years ago.
They have intuitive controls with an iPod'esque look and feel.
"Nintendo focuses on twitch games that generally skip story altogether, or have some bizarre Japanese theme that most adults can't figure out."
Nintendo focuses on fun-games. Sometimes, landing a series of jumps is more satisfying than shooting a zombie in the head and blood gushing out.
"Geeks, please don't respond that you love Nintendo... we all know that many of you don't care about things like story. I'm talking about MOST adults."
You're not even representing them very well. MOST adults don't have time to dick around with a confusing controller and 'adult-themes' catered to young teenagers. MOST adults WORK for a living. They come home, they want to relax. They want to play something simple and fun. That is, of course, assuming that games are even on these adults radar. What YOU are describing, is another geek clique.
I know where you're coming from. I've got my feet on both sides of the fence. I love Nintendo's offerings, but I enjoy a good 'adult' (I hate using this term. I'll talk more about that in a minute.) long game involving a story. I loved San Andreas. I enjoyed every minute of it. In that case, yes, it was the story I was after. I can nearly say the same for Resident Evil 4. Not as strong in the story department, but excellent presentation. The problem, though, is that I had to MAKE time to play these games. And for what? Well, sure, there was a bit of a story. It only took
You talk about 25+ year olds with disposable income. I qualify quite neatly into that demographic. But the time investment just isn't something that I'm willing to plunk down hundreds of dollars for. I barely have time to sneak a DVD in during the week. That's why, even though I loved the 'adult' games, the games I've put the most time into recently are Tetris DS, Mario Kart DS, and Brain Age. I can pick them up, play them for a short amount of time, and put them down again until tomorrow. And you wanna know something? This is why Nintendo has been successful. There are, however, 'adult' gamers that have more of this time to invest. This is why I mentioned you belonging to another clique earlier. It wasn't to be insulting. It was to point out that this isn't just a matter of disposable income, it's a matter of time investment, lifestyle, and priorities. You weren't necessarily modded down for going against popular opinion. (That happens all the time here on Slashdot, I can certainly tell you war stories about that.) You are just as likely to have been modded down for not getting what others are seeing. I don't think it's fair that you were modded down. Afterall, I think you're making points that will appeal to some. What you've said is certainly something to think about. But you just had to throw in what 'MOST adults' want. Too broad of generalization. Sorry.
"Hey Zonk, I would like to ask you to stop accepting non-informative nieuws on how Playstation 3 is going to fail and how much it sucks for a change!"
Normally I'd stand with you, but in this particular case I'm glad Zonk's doing this. Sony still has some time to make changes before launch. If they finally get the hint that the media isn't going to go along with them, then maybe, just maybe, they'll do something right.
"Massive hardware defects."
I'm curious just how 'massive' these are. Maybe I'm just not in tune with the XBOX 360 community, but those complaints seem to have died down. Corrections invited.
"Shitty graphics that are getting laughed at by pc reviewers."
When has this NOT been the case? Heh. PCs have more up-to-date hardware. The graphics will ALWAYS be better. In any event, you're in for some sad news: The PS3's graphics aren't going to be much better.
"All the talk about Nintendo changing the gaming world with the Wii now sounds silly with a machine that has crappy graphics like the 360 and a pointing device. So you swing swords in some games and you point at stuff in others. Ok."
Nintendo's coming out with a more intuitive control while you're stuck trying to play shooter games on the other two systems with an analog stick. It'll also be a LOT cheaper than the other two consoles. It's like picking the DS over the PSP.
"Where are all of these 'innovative' Wii games that are going to make millions of people who have never bought a console before rush out and buy a Wii?"
You can ask Sony the same question. Hardly relevent now, anyway. The system's not out, Nintendo's tight-lipped.
"If if the PS3 didn't play games it would probably still outsell both the Wii and effectively dead in the market 360 now that both HD-DVD and the image constraint token have died."
ICT hasn't died. It has taken a little break. HD-DVD hasn't died, either.
"For $499 you get a 1080p BluRay movie player to go with the dropping like a rock in price 1080p TV sets.""And you get 1080p games."
Goodie. You get the same graphics you had in the previous generation only at higher resolution. Wee. That'll just be a whole new level of fun for all of those sequels.
"And you backwards compatibility with virtually every PS1 and PS2 game you already own."
Yep. They're cramming a PS2 into a PS3 so you can play all those games. At your expense, of course. Gee, maybe I'll trade in my PS2 and get $50 off the $600 PS3 so I can play my existing library of games and a few high-res ones. I just hope they'll offer a system where you can have access to a 20-year library of classic games. Wouldn't that be neat?
"And you can webbrowse and other stuff right from your PS2."
Joy!! That'll be SO much better than the PC you're already using to post this!
"And you get free online gaming - unlike the 200-250 dollars Microsoft forces you to pay just to play online."
Yeah! Just like Nintendo's doing with the Wii and the DS! Go Sony!!
"The Wii and PS3 will go head to head in Japan, and the PS3 will still dominate in the US and Europe."
Oh, I agree with you, there. I'm sure 10's of millions of people in the USA and Europe are going to drop $600 on the PS3 just as soon as it launches.
"Nintendo really needs to show gamers something wild before launch..."
Hmm.. odd... I thought you had posted this in April or something. Did you hear of that little show called E3?
"...because all that good will they generated over the first half of 2006 is slipping away as gamers are seeing how bad Wii games look."
Really? Where are you getting this from? Every time Sony boasts about the PS3, it becomes a laugh-at-Sony party. Meanwhile, the DS is roughly the equivalent of the N64, and it's beating the equivalent-to-PS2 PSP. It seems pretty darned clear to me that the gamers have said "Enough, we want fun games."
"Every single system selling exclusive Sony had that got them 105+ million PS2 sales is on the PS3..."
Um... so? Who's going to buy a PS3 to play the game they've already played? The PS3 needs new games. Unfortunately, they've set up the hardware and the controls to play the same old crap we've already played sequels of.
Seriously man, your rationale's shot. The only real saving grace here is that Sony still hasn't laid down all their cards. They made huge asses of themeselves at E3, maybe that'll drive them to do something drastic. Right now, the PS3's not looking good at all.
"By RAW SPECS:
Genesis was stronger than the SNES,"
Small nitpick: The Genesis had a faster main processor. It ran at 7mhz while the SNES ran at a little under 4. The SNES had a graphic chip built in that wiped the floor with the Genesis GFX-wise. The end result was that the SNES's graphics were a lot better than the Genesis'. I don't think this affects your point too much, though, because Nintendo had a terrible time fighting against Sega in that round. Sega had the less powerful machine, but still managed to hold on to market share. In the end, Nintendo (and its 3rd parties...) cranked out the games for the win.
You should have mentioned the original Game Boy. That little 8-bit, 1mhz, grayscale system killed the Game Gear, Lynx, and Nomad. Well.. I'm being a little dramatic. It's not clear that any of those systems would have survived if the GB hadn't been around.
"In terms of human lives, terrorism in America isn't even a blip on the radar."
Small nitpick: 9/11 severely messed up the economy for a while, at least a lot more than murders and suicides. Whether that realistically justifies the money poured into Homeland Security is up for somebody else to debate, I'm not defending it. I'm just pointing out that terrorism has more consequences than just killing people. That's why the term terrorism is used in place of mass-murder.
"However, there is always the chance that he had a friend genuinely interested in doing artwork."
Equally, there's always the chance that victims of the 419 scam are genuinely interested in recieving millions of dollars.
"IT IS "A LOT". This makes me seriously fucking angry."
No girl for YOU!!
"The whole "by invite only" thing was a joke really, when you consider how easy it was to get an invite."
It was a clever viral marketing gimmick. All those 'invites in sigs' things you mentioned got people asking "What is GMail?" At least, that's how I ended up using it. Otherwise I would have said "pftbptbptbpt another web mail."
"...and so that you can be tracked. Big Brother is watching you."
Yeah. Big Brother is watching you take a photo of Carl's Jr.. Afterall, those little numbers a GPS unit spits out are useless without a photo to attach to them.
*puts on the computer, covers one eye, and shouts "Look at me! I'm Leela!"
"Just as well. I like Linux better than any Windows version I've ever tried."
:/
Yeah, I totally understand that. My preference for Windows has nothing to do with feeling it's superior. My apps have me pretty much anchored.
G'nite, man.
"Who is going to pay for an Internet connection on a really long flight when their laptop battery can't carry a charge long enough to use it all the way?"
There's already a large group of customers that bring their less-than-flight-battery-life laptops on planes every day. It's not ideal, but I can already think of a few people (including myself) who, at the very least, would give it a good hard look. You have to remember that people have been bringing their less-than-flight-duration-laptops on planes for years as it is.
"Games, as they are now, are generally horrible. It's a lot like Hollywood nowadays, not just because of movie frenchise games, but also because it costs millions of dollars to just make a game, and then nobody wants to take their chances on a game that is less likely to sell (i.e. isn't really mainstream) so they release pretty much ONLY first person shooters."
I sometimes wish I had a time machine. I'd love to pop back about 15 years and take a look at both Hollywood and the video game market and see if the idea that both industries have gotten worse is really true. I was a teenager back in the 16-bit days so I know my percpetions are different. (Just to illustrate: I saw Volcano when I was... oh.. 17 or so. I loved it. I watched it again on TV recently and ARGH that movie was terrible!)
What really inspired me to respond to your post was the comment about only FPS shooters being made. Back in the 16-bit days, it was fighters. Lots and lots and lots and lots of TERRIBLE Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat wannabes. My favorite example of just how bad it got was Rise of the Robots. Not only did this game try to capitalize on the fighting fad, but it also tried to jump on the CGI bandwagon. They didn't get either right.
Anyway, the point isn't to say that Hollywood and VGs aren't worse today. Rather, I'm just curious if they really are or not. I've read a number of Calvin and Hobbes' cartoons taking pokes at Hollywood sequels. Seems like the same old gripe, just a different decade. Just look at Police Academy. Argh.
"Oh, and SE is 'Second Edition', not 'Special Edition'. Believe me, there was nothing special about it."
That was my lame attempt at a joke. Heh.
A thought struck me about the boot time. I wonder if you had extra services running in Second Edition that required more RAM...? I tried booting 2000 Server on a machine wih 96 megs of RAM and it took roughly 10 mins to boot...
"Who says you can't make monet from free software !"
Well.. I suppose the GIMP's good enough these days to create a monet, but you'd stil be far better off springing for Photoshop.
"I have it running on the hd of a PII 350mhz machine with a joke of a video card and only 64mb ram, and it will fly. Takes no longer than a minute to boot. Win98SE, on the same PC, took 5-10 minutes just to get to the login screen."
Really? Years ago, I had a P2 350 with 64 meg of RAM and Windows 98. (not Special Edition. If it has a 'boot slower' feature, I'd be interested to hear about it...) That didn't take 10 minutes to boot. Maybe 2, but nowhere near 10. If it did, I would have switched to NT far earlier than I did.
"I thought the title said "Winnebago Code Camp". Unless you're programming the spaceship from Spaceballs, computers and Winnebagos don't mix well."
Oh.. I dunno. The scanner interface was quite elegent. Seems to me somebody already won that contest.
"Ah, but how relevant are you?"
I was asking out of personal interest, not out of some desire to shoot it down. I hope the developers don't share your attitude, though. It's not like it's a super hard feature to write.
From the Wikipedia article on the Gates Foundation:
"To maintain its status as a charitable foundation, it must donate at least 5% of its assets each year. Thus the donations from the foundation each year would amount to over $1 billion at a minimum."
"I don't understand why people bother with AR anymore. Other PDF viewers like FoxIt Reader manage to do nostly the same in less than 1MB."
Does FoxIt have a search feature that'll go through entire folders and search those documents at the same time? I use this frequently...