I think his post was more a subtle jab at MS then at you. It is pretty much their style to promise the moon when a competitor comes out with a good product so that people hold off on buying it, even though they never deliver said moon. I believe sony used a similar tactic on the dreamcast. IIRC, Microsoft has been promising WinFS or something like it since 1992 for whatever their next operating system is going to be. At this point, it seems safe to assume they just plain don't know how to do it and it ain't going to happen.
Oh, I totally agree. Or how about this little cliche: "My mission is to collect X number of doodads, held by various powerful monsters/gods/etc and install them in a temple/machine/other plot device to prevent an all powerful monster that cannot be destroyed by anything on this earth from coming into creation. Even though I did everything right, and the entire game everyone has been saying the world will end after this guy comes into creation, the guy is born anyway (insert contrived plot element here) and I have to fight him as a super end boss. Only it turns out he's actually been totally hyped up, since one dude with some skillz can kill him afterall."
For more examples of this plot, see...about 50% of all games made for any platform. Just once I'd like to race to that temple and just seal a gate like I'd been excited about doing the whole game, ending the game there. Sure, I know that goes against the "every game needs a giant endboss" aspect of gaming...but when I spend 25 hours collecting a bunch of crystals to seal some gate and then get a "just kidding! those crystals don't work!" the game makes me feel like the entire beginning was kind of a waste of time.
Why both make it for the PC at all then? I've seriously been wondering if Microsoft has been trying to figure out whether they could get away with requiring 'Games for Windows' games to use a xbox360 controller. I mean, the whole thing kind of sounds like they're trying to turn a gaming PC into an overpriced xbox360.
The question is...why bother spending the extra money on a PC Gaming machine at all if all there is to play is console ports that aren't even updated to take advantage of the different platform. I wonder about the business model MS uses...I mean the original xbox was sort of the same thing.
Also, if the cable and phone companies did that they would set a bad precident for themselves upholding their end of the aggreement with the tax payers.
One can only hope they do as bang up of a job as they did with those Halo games...or Thief deadly shadows or even Oblivion. Oh sure, those last couple were actually billed as PC games but they both had the stink of console on them. I mean...you guys did get a load of the gigantic icons and text in Oblivion right? And the limited shortcut keys? What would it have taken? 3 Days to shrink the icons and fonts while expanding some of the hotkeys for the PC? And they couldn't even be bothered to do that. Hell, in most ways Morrowind had a better interface then Oblivion.
I'm not sure what the complaint is about the terrans. Their units all suck because they require extensive micromanagement. The siege tank is the only awesome unit they have, the rest range from moderately interesting but of limited utility to completely useless. And since the zerg have flying siege tanks they win.
I like to play the terran sometimes, but I find them a real challenge.
Not just marketing for the game, but marketing for the whole franchise and how it spills over. A groundwork was already put in place by the original content and the game builds on it. 'Fresh' content isn't going to get this head start.
The license/movie tie-in or whatever has marketing on its side. Lots of people probably bought X-Men legends because they read it was a good game...but I bet just as many bought because they loved comics, or they loved the movies, or their friends loved the comics and told them about it. They went in a store and saw a game with 'X-Men' on the box, or in this example 'Cars' and said "Hey, I liked that...maybe the game is good". Some buy the game right then and there, others do some research on it and buy it later. The game stands on the shoulders of the movie.
This doesn't always, but can assure that even a terrible game based on a good movie sells well. It works for sequels to games and movies as well. Hell, look at the new star wars...everyone watched them even though they suck. Why? Because we loved the originals so much. Is it any surprise that the same power can spill across mediums?
Well, a newspaper is a pretty good example of where that thinking is right. I mean, when I read the paper everyday I quickly forget if had a typo or it was boring or something like that. But if it didn't even come that day? Well, that would really piss me off.
Why not? I'll remind you that even a broken clock is right twice a day. Its often much easier to trash a person then their refute their position directly, hell thats pretty much how politics work...however that doesn't mean thats the correct way to make decisions.
What? Is this part of the "Games for Windows" initiative? I thought it was suppose to be easier?
Maybe I'm looking at this wrong...maybe this is part of the games they were talking about. Is there a secret level where I get to configure boot floppies to free up conventional memory?
My box at home is XP, and my wife's is 2K. The auto update thing shows updates for both of them around the same time. I never thought about it much, but they seem to keep rolling out the patches.
Additionally, 2K lacks activation and WGA so its a lot easier to work with.
Whether you first points are correct or not, I won't dispute here, but OpenGL certainly has at least one advantage...its available for more then one buggy, still largely unpopular operating system. Microsoft's decision to break backwards compatibility in directX10 in order to give people a reason to begrudingly purchase vista may ultimately just hurt DX10 instead of helping vista. Developers have jumped on directX because it works with everything, now they might be forced to code for an API that only works on a slowly adopted...or go back to multiple APIs. Or perhaps they'll just use OpenGL.
While you're company may be willing to abandone the majority of the market in favor of coding for the latest and great API...most other companies would prefer to sell more copies.
So true. I really like how he points out that they usually swear far past the point of absurdity to make up for it, because it always seems like they want to talk a ton of trash as well.
Most informed people pushing for biodiesel want to see the algae based kind, which can be grown in dirty seawater tanks in arizona and has a way better yield then soy. Soy biodiesel is crap, in about the same way corn ethanol is.
The trouble is, the corn lobby is still pretty big. So we've got tons of people excited about this kill to birds with one stone solution thats really a half assed way to go about it. Its good intentions, but its not the most efficient way to do things. And we need the efficient solution, not another excuse for farmers to keep growing corn because they don't want to grow anything else. The US has already replaced about every conceivable food item with some sort of corn derived mutation. Maybe instead of trying to find more ways to use up all this damn corn we have lying around, we should stop growing so much of it.
Biodiesel isn't without its handful of drawbacks (The US hates diesel, so we currently don't have a lot of diesel cars and there are some issues as pointed out with colder temperatures) but it has a much better yield then the "we think, under good conditions it probably wouldn't use more fuel while being produced then it yields" ethanol. And since any solution would be introduced gradually, its not unreasonable to expect auto makers to start producing some more diesel cars. Its not like diesel is some bizarre technology that would be to hard to figure out to put in a compact car.
I guess its no more outrageous then a world that has a population of 90% demigod warriors...the other 10% being NPC shop keepers that exist to serve them.
I agree. I see a lot of people posting here are trying to make this out to be a bad thing and some even saying they are planning on switching distros because of it. And thats fine, its their choice...thats what its all about right? But if linux ever wants to become a serious competitor in the OS market, it's going to have to "just work" and be easier to manage for your average joes.
Just because linux is free, doesn't mean people don't want to run non-free software on it. I want too. I'm sure a lot of businesses are holding out because their favorite application doesn't support it. This almost feels like a bunch of people's favorite band garage band has an opportunity to become famous and they're pooping on it because then they won't be memebers of an exclusive club anymore! Linux needs to get popular to gain some traction with hardware makers and people that make a lot the desktop software the world uses. That'll create a chain reaction.
Thanks for this! It looks like this just came out with this and aren't really advertising it yet, probably its sort of in a test run. The selection is pretty weak, but since its just an added value for me I can't complain. Should be nice when I can't find anything to watch.
Does vista even have directX 10 yet? (and by directX, I mean direct3d) Last time I checked it was still waiting for that component to arrive and was presently functioning with DX9. I could be wrong though, I don't really have any interest in vista.
It also had native IPX network support, and later on...it could be played with a TCP/IP wrapper on the internets! I used to play those dos games on kali over my 14.4 modem back in the day!
Yeah, but they won't like the band anymore after it becomes famous and 'sells out' so they have a vested interest in hiding away their little secret. Surely you've witnessed this behavior. Hell, I would go even so far as to say I've done the exact same thing myself. Its stupid, but these bands are seen as an exclusive club that only a select few 'get in too'. When the doors are opened to everyone, it loses that appeal.
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I think his post was more a subtle jab at MS then at you. It is pretty much their style to promise the moon when a competitor comes out with a good product so that people hold off on buying it, even though they never deliver said moon. I believe sony used a similar tactic on the dreamcast. IIRC, Microsoft has been promising WinFS or something like it since 1992 for whatever their next operating system is going to be. At this point, it seems safe to assume they just plain don't know how to do it and it ain't going to happen.
Oh, I totally agree. Or how about this little cliche: "My mission is to collect X number of doodads, held by various powerful monsters/gods/etc and install them in a temple/machine/other plot device to prevent an all powerful monster that cannot be destroyed by anything on this earth from coming into creation. Even though I did everything right, and the entire game everyone has been saying the world will end after this guy comes into creation, the guy is born anyway (insert contrived plot element here) and I have to fight him as a super end boss. Only it turns out he's actually been totally hyped up, since one dude with some skillz can kill him afterall."
For more examples of this plot, see...about 50% of all games made for any platform. Just once I'd like to race to that temple and just seal a gate like I'd been excited about doing the whole game, ending the game there. Sure, I know that goes against the "every game needs a giant endboss" aspect of gaming...but when I spend 25 hours collecting a bunch of crystals to seal some gate and then get a "just kidding! those crystals don't work!" the game makes me feel like the entire beginning was kind of a waste of time.
Why both make it for the PC at all then? I've seriously been wondering if Microsoft has been trying to figure out whether they could get away with requiring 'Games for Windows' games to use a xbox360 controller. I mean, the whole thing kind of sounds like they're trying to turn a gaming PC into an overpriced xbox360.
The question is...why bother spending the extra money on a PC Gaming machine at all if all there is to play is console ports that aren't even updated to take advantage of the different platform. I wonder about the business model MS uses...I mean the original xbox was sort of the same thing.
Well that pie in the sky promise would be in line with the man on mars by 2010 or whatever he promised.
Also, if the cable and phone companies did that they would set a bad precident for themselves upholding their end of the aggreement with the tax payers.
One can only hope they do as bang up of a job as they did with those Halo games...or Thief deadly shadows or even Oblivion. Oh sure, those last couple were actually billed as PC games but they both had the stink of console on them. I mean...you guys did get a load of the gigantic icons and text in Oblivion right? And the limited shortcut keys? What would it have taken? 3 Days to shrink the icons and fonts while expanding some of the hotkeys for the PC? And they couldn't even be bothered to do that. Hell, in most ways Morrowind had a better interface then Oblivion.
I'm not sure what the complaint is about the terrans. Their units all suck because they require extensive micromanagement. The siege tank is the only awesome unit they have, the rest range from moderately interesting but of limited utility to completely useless. And since the zerg have flying siege tanks they win.
I like to play the terran sometimes, but I find them a real challenge.
Not just marketing for the game, but marketing for the whole franchise and how it spills over. A groundwork was already put in place by the original content and the game builds on it. 'Fresh' content isn't going to get this head start.
The license/movie tie-in or whatever has marketing on its side. Lots of people probably bought X-Men legends because they read it was a good game...but I bet just as many bought because they loved comics, or they loved the movies, or their friends loved the comics and told them about it. They went in a store and saw a game with 'X-Men' on the box, or in this example 'Cars' and said "Hey, I liked that...maybe the game is good". Some buy the game right then and there, others do some research on it and buy it later. The game stands on the shoulders of the movie.
This doesn't always, but can assure that even a terrible game based on a good movie sells well. It works for sequels to games and movies as well. Hell, look at the new star wars...everyone watched them even though they suck. Why? Because we loved the originals so much. Is it any surprise that the same power can spill across mediums?
Well, a newspaper is a pretty good example of where that thinking is right. I mean, when I read the paper everyday I quickly forget if had a typo or it was boring or something like that. But if it didn't even come that day? Well, that would really piss me off.
Why not? I'll remind you that even a broken clock is right twice a day. Its often much easier to trash a person then their refute their position directly, hell thats pretty much how politics work...however that doesn't mean thats the correct way to make decisions.
I thought Crichton was a fiction author that talked a lot, not a scientist. Who are the scientists in this discussion?
What? Is this part of the "Games for Windows" initiative? I thought it was suppose to be easier?
Maybe I'm looking at this wrong...maybe this is part of the games they were talking about. Is there a secret level where I get to configure boot floppies to free up conventional memory?
My box at home is XP, and my wife's is 2K. The auto update thing shows updates for both of them around the same time. I never thought about it much, but they seem to keep rolling out the patches.
Additionally, 2K lacks activation and WGA so its a lot easier to work with.
Whether you first points are correct or not, I won't dispute here, but OpenGL certainly has at least one advantage...its available for more then one buggy, still largely unpopular operating system. Microsoft's decision to break backwards compatibility in directX10 in order to give people a reason to begrudingly purchase vista may ultimately just hurt DX10 instead of helping vista. Developers have jumped on directX because it works with everything, now they might be forced to code for an API that only works on a slowly adopted...or go back to multiple APIs. Or perhaps they'll just use OpenGL.
While you're company may be willing to abandone the majority of the market in favor of coding for the latest and great API...most other companies would prefer to sell more copies.
So true. I really like how he points out that they usually swear far past the point of absurdity to make up for it, because it always seems like they want to talk a ton of trash as well.
Most informed people pushing for biodiesel want to see the algae based kind, which can be grown in dirty seawater tanks in arizona and has a way better yield then soy. Soy biodiesel is crap, in about the same way corn ethanol is.
The trouble is, the corn lobby is still pretty big. So we've got tons of people excited about this kill to birds with one stone solution thats really a half assed way to go about it. Its good intentions, but its not the most efficient way to do things. And we need the efficient solution, not another excuse for farmers to keep growing corn because they don't want to grow anything else. The US has already replaced about every conceivable food item with some sort of corn derived mutation. Maybe instead of trying to find more ways to use up all this damn corn we have lying around, we should stop growing so much of it.
Biodiesel isn't without its handful of drawbacks (The US hates diesel, so we currently don't have a lot of diesel cars and there are some issues as pointed out with colder temperatures) but it has a much better yield then the "we think, under good conditions it probably wouldn't use more fuel while being produced then it yields" ethanol. And since any solution would be introduced gradually, its not unreasonable to expect auto makers to start producing some more diesel cars. Its not like diesel is some bizarre technology that would be to hard to figure out to put in a compact car.
I guess its no more outrageous then a world that has a population of 90% demigod warriors...the other 10% being NPC shop keepers that exist to serve them.
I agree. I see a lot of people posting here are trying to make this out to be a bad thing and some even saying they are planning on switching distros because of it. And thats fine, its their choice...thats what its all about right? But if linux ever wants to become a serious competitor in the OS market, it's going to have to "just work" and be easier to manage for your average joes.
Just because linux is free, doesn't mean people don't want to run non-free software on it. I want too. I'm sure a lot of businesses are holding out because their favorite application doesn't support it. This almost feels like a bunch of people's favorite band garage band has an opportunity to become famous and they're pooping on it because then they won't be memebers of an exclusive club anymore! Linux needs to get popular to gain some traction with hardware makers and people that make a lot the desktop software the world uses. That'll create a chain reaction.
Then don't buy them off Click and Run. Seems simple enough.
Maybe you're waiting for that. I'm still waiting for my impending SARS death. I was promised that doom scenario first.
I was at fault for the Oblivion delay when I did the same thing.
Thanks for this! It looks like this just came out with this and aren't really advertising it yet, probably its sort of in a test run. The selection is pretty weak, but since its just an added value for me I can't complain. Should be nice when I can't find anything to watch.
Does vista even have directX 10 yet? (and by directX, I mean direct3d) Last time I checked it was still waiting for that component to arrive and was presently functioning with DX9. I could be wrong though, I don't really have any interest in vista.
It also had native IPX network support, and later on...it could be played with a TCP/IP wrapper on the internets! I used to play those dos games on kali over my 14.4 modem back in the day!
Yeah, but they won't like the band anymore after it becomes famous and 'sells out' so they have a vested interest in hiding away their little secret. Surely you've witnessed this behavior. Hell, I would go even so far as to say I've done the exact same thing myself. Its stupid, but these bands are seen as an exclusive club that only a select few 'get in too'. When the doors are opened to everyone, it loses that appeal.