IIRC it's a requirement that all XBLA games have a free trial version (which is really just the full version but locked out of full functionality)
As for the articles clam that the arbitrary point system is to confuse people, I'd have to disagree. I thought the same at first myself but after using it for a while I actually think it's a great idea... The Xbox Live Marketplace is GLOBAL if something costs 400MP in the Us then it also costs 400MP in Canada and 400MP all through Europe and 400MP in Japan. Rather then trying to localize the price of things for every currency in the world they just made their own pay scale, and IMO it works really well.
After having purchased a few things it becomes easy to follow. in US dollars 400MP = $5 exactly considering most game expansion packs, XBLA games (pretty much anything other then themes and pictures) cost 200, 400, 800, or 1200 it's fairly simple to figure out in your head how much they're worth in real money.
As for Lumines being the most expensive XBLA game to date, it's really not all that bad considering the PSP version is a whole lot more expensive, Not to mention you'll be able to play the free demo version to your hearts content before deciding to actually buy it.
Use the above mentioned CD labeling system.
Place CD's in 208/300 CD/DVD binder.
Get shelving that will fit the Binders (Ikea IVAR works great for adjustments)
FTFA:
They are struggling to find a better storage solution than what they have now as the current setup is awkward and requires quite a bit of space. They are removing the media from the jewel case and slipping them into one of those large notebook style disk holders and then storing the notebook on a shelf.
Sounds like that's about what they currently do and it's not working out for them.
Well I don't actually download anything that **AAs would care about. Just figured that if I DID ever pirate anything they'd care about it might make for a clean escape... Thanks for the tips though
Most of the time I use a torrent client "installed" (IIRC it doesn't actually install it's just an executable) and cached to that drive. Everything downloads straight there and then I'll copy it to one of the other drives if I need to do anything to it. Any ideas where one would lock down traceability further?
Nonetheless, the academic background is irrelevant when talking about the veracity of given statements. A statement is true or false independent of who makes it.
Exactly...
I think people are forgetting the whole point about the ESRB raitings and why they're under debate here. The argument that Dr. Thompson is making is that the ESRB raiting are flawed. What she seems to be forgetting is that no matter how you decide to rate the games (even if by her own definition PacMan is considered 62% violent) the whole POINT of the ESRB raitings is to give the common consumer who hasn't played the game an idea of the kind of content contained on the disc. If the common consumer doesn't agree with a 62% rating for PacMan then it doesn't work plain and simple.
THAT is the point Stanton is trying to make... basically that the average consumer finds the current ESRB system more useful to their purchasing decisions then the system used by Dr. Thompson. Reguardless of educational background, as a VIDEO GAME CONSUMER I agree whole heartedly, I do in-fact find the current ESRB system more useful then the one suggested by Dr. Thompson.
yeah I've heard of some extreme cases where they were able to swap out the control board with a fresh one to get the data out (if you were hardcore and had access to a clean room you might be able to swap out the platters too)
The best way to destroy data on a hard drive is to open it up and smash the platters, if your in a hurry a bulk tape eraser or other large magnetic device is also good.
As for myself I keep all my downloads on an external USB 2.0 drive, simply unplug it and poof, it's as if the data was never on the machine in the first place. Of course this is just a happy consequence of my machine, being that it's liquid-cooled two hard drives are mounted to a cooler, I needed more space so rather then ripping one of the smaller ones out I just put it in an enclosure.
It sounds like our experiences in PC gaming differ. To be honest I haven't played a PC game in the last two or three years. However all of the issues I mentioned were problems I did actually face that turned me away from PCs as a gaming platform. Being that I haven't gamed on a PC in years the rig I have NOW is about that old and would only be good for my day to day non-gaming tasks... that 2nd rig that I would buy would have to be my gaming machine.
I do frequently buy games the day they come out. I've been anticipating a games release, picked them up at EB or wherever when they first came out only to get through the install and find that there was some bug that made the game not run on my machine due to a hardware incompatability. The store wont take it back because it's open software and I basically have to sit on my hands until the developer gets around to patching it. (it's happened to me more then once) The real kick in the nuts is if the price drops or a sale happens before the patch comes out.
As for tweaking the controls, I loath playing games with a keyboard and mouse, using a gamepad or other controller for PC gaming is no big deal but in my experience games rarely have default controls for gamepads and sometimes you'll have to do some digging to find the right ini to edit which can be even more painful if you're trying to use analog controls. If you do it a lot you get better at it, if you only play one or two games you don't have to set things up that often. but I play A LOT of games, I rarely watch TV or Movies, I game. The hardest part of "installing" a console game is removing the plastic wrapper from the case.
Call me lazy but the added cost and hassle just wasn't worth it to me. IMO PCs offer 2 distinct advantages 1.Better graphics (this gab narrows and widens all the time and depends on hardware) and 2. user mods.
Graphically: PCs will almost always have the edge when compairing a console to bleeding edge PC hardware, however compairing cross platoform with moderatly priced PC I find the difference to be more then forgivable considering the difference in price. For instance Oblivion on a mid-high range PC is only moderatly superior then the Xbox 360 counterpart, even the Xbox 1 version of Spliter Cell Chaos Theory looked as good as the PC version (abeit lower res). As someone who typically plays through a game and then shelves it and plays something new stuff like user mods don't really interest me. I get bored with games too fast, probably why I never got into MMOs and why graphical increases down the road don't do much for me since I've already finished with the game and moved on to new games.
...but I've heard issues of people not being able to get the controller without the game (for when they break the guitar).
Really? every store I've seen selling it has the controller alone for $40 for those that want to rock out with 2 players at the same time. Though I've never seen just the game alone.
Console games do improve over the lifetime of said console, to a point. But an individual console game will not improve, in visual appearance, over the lifetime of the console. Zelda: WindWaker still looks exactly the same as it always did.
That's not necessarily always true Halo 2 on the Xbox 360 looks WORLDS better then it did on the Xbox 1. The Xbox 360 bumps the resolutions up from 720x480 to 1280x720 and adds 4xMSAA... it does this quite a few Xbox 1 games (every game on the BC list in-fact). The Rumor is the PS3 will do the same, increasing the resolution and adding nice effects the FSAA to the older PS1 and PS2 games. I'm sure the old Nintendo games will receive some form of beautification when running on the Wii's virtual console.
I used to be a PC gamer but eventually it was just too much of a hassle, spending sometimes hours installing, finding the patches you need, WAITING for the patches you need if they aren't out for your hardware yet, then spending sometimes hours tweaking the controls the way you like them, leaning the good servers for each of your games, and to top it all off I'm still sitting at my desk staring at a 19" screen and crappy cube speakers... the same thing I just did all day at work.... Walk down into my basement and I have a big comfy sectional couch, a DLP projector shooting onto a 94" wide screen, and big theater quality speakers (not the crappy surround sound in a box type). My controller is wireless, I can just pop in the disc and INSTANTLY play without having to install anything, without waiting for patches, without having to tweak my controls, without having to tweak my graphics, without having to research where the good online servers are. I can just come home any enjoy my gaming. Sure I could get a wireless controller for my PC and put my PC down there in the home theater room, but I don't just use my PC for gaming, I do web development, email, internet browsing. I'd pretty much have to either buy a 2nd PC or haul it up and down the stairs every time I wanted to play games, yeah I could maybe buy a laptop, but then it's not very upgradable... not to mention it still doesn't remedy all the time I've wasted in setup and configuration before I can even fully enjoy my game.
But besides all of that... the BIGGEST reason I play games on a console instead of a PC is really quite simple... Do you know of a PC that can play Dead or Alive 4 or Project Gotham Racing 3? Most of the games I like to play are ONLY available on consoles. The PC space is mostly filled with MMORPGs, FPSs, and RTSs with the occasional big franchise title from another genre. The games might be a little more expensive on consoles (but I rent my games so that's not a problem). If you figure consoles will get you $300 to $400 every 5 years, heck even the PS3 at $500 to $600 is still less then you'd have to spend on PC upgrades annually, and if you're not gaming on a PC then you don't need much. Heck my machine is an AMD 2600, with 512MB ram and a GeForce2, the most intensive thing I use on it is Photoshop but even that doesn't really give me any problems. Without having to spend money on my machine I have a lot more time and money left over to spend on other stuff.
I can see why PC gamers get defensive when the console argument comes up though, most PC gamers build their own rigs, it's made of their blood sweat and tears and a lot of time and money invested... trying to convince them that console gaming is better is like trying to convince a mother that her baby is ugly.
Would you care if your employer refused to let you take smoke breaks during the day, or not even let you smoke on company property (as in you'd have to walk out PAST the parking lot to smoke). My employer does, first it was no smoking in the building (no problems there), then it was no smoking within 30ft of the building because people in the window offices didn't like it (ok, understandable), then it was no smoking anywhere but two small designated areas outside because they didn't like the cigarettes creating a line 30ft around the building parameter (a bit annoying but..), then they banned smoking on company property altogether (because being smoke free is trendy), then they banned taking smoke breaks because it was taking people too long when they had to walk all the way off campus to smoke.
How far do you take it? My company went from an open internet to filtering almost everything. Now we often joke that with all the securities we can't even get our REAL work done. Trying to access the FTP site of a company we buy software from to get the latest version of their app... NOPE ALL FTP access has been blocked, it took me two weeks to get permission and my project was late because of it. Writing code if I'm having trouble figuring out how to do a particular technique I'll often search online to see if there is any example code for what I'm trying to do or if there have been similar questions asked in any of the popular programing forums and newsgroups... NOPE all blocked now so instead of finding what I need within 10 minutes and moving on with my work I have to trudge through our out-dated dead tree resources which can sometimes take hours and other times provide no solution at all... in which case I have to write down what I was looking for and search when I get home.
I can understand blocking pages like myspace, eBay or ESPN if you've got a problem with people spending all day there instead of doing work but how far do you take it? I enjoy reading Slashdot on my breaks or browsing eBay and youtube on my lunch hour. That's a Perk right there. Working late at night it's nice to take a break from the code and just surf for a bit to relax and refresh...
If there's a problem with people surfing instead of working, and you've spoken too them about it and it's STILL a problem, then fine block some of the popular non-work related sites, at that point it was obviously a privilege that was abused... but instituting a company wide policy that blocks just about everything only shows that you don't trust your own employees which can degrade the employer/employee relationship.
I think the intent of the article is that the internet today is the modern day equivalent of quietly listening to the radio or reading the news paper on your breaks, webmail is more like making the occasional personal phone call. If employees want to steal stuff then they're going to steal stuff. Locking down web access (among other things) shows a lack of trust in the employees, and without trust it can make your employees feel more like caged rats as opposed to part of the companies "family".
Not to mention taking those restrictions so far that they start to dramatically cut into real work uses is enough to make your employees seek new employers.
I think they could easily open the market to appeal more to female gamers if they just TALKED TO SOME... My girlfriend plays games all the time, it's pretty simple why some games appeal to her and why some don't. There are lots of basic and simple things you could do to win over female gamers. For instance when I bought Tony Hawk American Wasteland she was anxious to play it because skateboarding interests her... she became uninterested with it about 5 minutes after starting simply because she couldn't play through the story mode with a female character. Even the create-a-character for single player mode offered garbage for customization options so attempting to make a character that looked like her was almost impossible, I on the other hand was able to create a character that looked EXACTLY like me (you'd think that they'd offer more customization options for the females then the males).
Most recently she played through Oblivion and has started on Ninety-Nine Nights. She's also a fan of games like the Sims, the Final Fantasy Series and even Soul Calibur.
There are three elements I've found that most appeal to females when it comes to games:
1. Allow the player to play as a female character, character customization is also beneficial and if you do add customization make it deep enough that you can make exact replicas of people in-game, including clothes. Your stereotypical female likes to do herself up, shop for clothes and make a statement that represents her... why not incorporate this into a game, no female will identify with a hulking ex-marine or some sword wielding alpha-male in a loin cloth.
2. Make sure the game has a well written plot/storyline/back-story but more importantly CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. Your stereotypical female strives on social interaction, cheesy soap-operas and TV dramas, IRL they gossip about people usually centering around social interactions and relationships. I don't care how good your graphics and physics are most popular video game genres are missing this element, sports games, racing games, fighting games, shooters etc. Why do you think the most popular games with females are games like WoW, Final Fantasy and the Sims? I'd be willing to bet games like GTA would even sell well with women if they allowed you to play as a female protagonist and added some social/relationship drama to the plot.
3. Make the games easy to play, most females aren't the "twitch" gamers that gravitate towards Shooters and fighting games. Your stereotypical female isn't even a gamer so most haven't developed the dexterity to even play those types of games without a lot of time spent learning how (and you certainly aren't going to attract any to make that kind of commitment if you only ever offer up male interest oriented stories). Simple gameplay, for now, if the female gamer becomes common place then you can start introducing more female oriented titles with complex gameplay but for now simple gameplay is key. While my girlfriend is a die-hard Final Fantasy fan she didn't care for Final Fantasy X-2 because they went from strategy oriented Turn-Based battles to more of a Real Time Battle system, she enjoyed the game but had trouble keeping up with the pace during battles and ultimatly put it down, she isn't even interested in the new FFVII DoC. While Oblivion had real time fights the fight system was quite simple. Move around, swing your weapon or cast a spell. The hardest part she had with that game was using the dual analogs for your basic move and look, but the game interested her enough that she was willing to get used to that kind of control.
It's not very difficult to appeal to female gamers, Most games that we have today could incorporate minimal changes to open up the market to a whole new demographic. The problem is that most of these industry types will bark about how we need to do something yet seemingly haven't even taken the time to sit down with existing female games and find out why they like the games they do. Your stereotypical female gamer
With that said, unfortunately I doubt Microsoft will ever let Bungie just stop making new Halo games; they'll flog the franchise as long as they possibly can, until it becomes ridiculous.
Supposedly Halo 3 will be the last Halo in the series... hence the tag-line "finish the fight" IIRC Bungie said they wanted to move on to other things while the series was still on top rather then letting it get overproduced and sequeled to death like a lot of other franchises.
Well I think he's right on some levels... of course if you found such a pattern you'd want to keep it to yourself... but if you DID releases it what would happen... everyone would try to trade based on that pattern and then the pattern would no longer exist because people changed their habits once they saw the pattern. It's almost paradoxical.
Thinking about computers looking for patterns and you've got almost the same thing. The more computer controller traders you've got then the more predictable the market will become, if you've got everyone trading with a similar AI then wouldn't the market reach a sort of equilibrium where just about everyone ends up with the roughly same amount of money they put in it?
Sellers might be the ones DIRECTLY paying eBay... but the root of the money trail starts with the buyer. Where else do you think those sellers got money to pay for the auction listing (heck most of them include the eBay fees in the shipping costs). If eBay's management has so much as half a brain they'll realize this.
As someone who frequently buys as well as sells on eBay (about 50/50) I can completely agree with a BLIND feedback system.. Leave feedback within 30 days of auction end until both parties have left feedback neither will be visible. If the time reaches 30 days and only 1 party has left feedback then it becomes viewable and the other party forfeits their ability to leave feedback.
As both a buyer and a seller I definitely wouldn't like it if the seller was forced to leave feedback first. Typically I wait for some kind of conformation from the buyer that they received the item I sent them and that they're happy with it. IMO the transaction isn't complete until it's complete for BOTH parties.
FWIW she's 25 and in NH. She's engaged, and trust me no matter how cool a tri-force tattoo migh be YOU DON'T WANT HER. On second though why don't you come up here and sweep her away... I'm sure her husband to be would be more then happy about that, he seems quite misrible with her. Not that it really has anything to do with her gaming preferences.
I was told most of the issues for the Wii at E3 were due to not having each control setup for each person. The storage on the remote is supposed to keep this setup info for you, so you can bring it to a friend's house I guess. It's not the same using a device, seeing a demo, or listening to some moron from the press trust me.
Interesting, I didn't know that. I really hope it can save settings in a profile much like my Xbox 360 does (that profile system is pretty damn slick if you haven't used it). Storing it in the controller is ok but if I'm sharing that controller with others it does me no good.
I've been burned too many times by pre-orders in the past I just stopped bothering... The very last pre-order I did was for the original Star wars Trilogy Box set. I was selling some used DVDs to EB and they had a promotion where if you give them X amount of DVDs they'd double their value towards a pre-order or something... I figured I'd put in for Star Wars because I was planning on buying it anyway and I was getting "such a great deal", with the DVDs I put in and the bonus the Box Set got paid for in full. Release day came I went to the store: "oh... we already gave out all our pre-orders, we don't have any more for sale"... this was aggravating because the store wasn't exactly anywhere near where I lived, quite out of the way in-fact, I browsed around the mall and felt pretty depressed that every other store that sold DVDs had them sitting on shelves yet I had already paid for it and somehow not yet had it in my hands. They called me the next week and told me that had it in, I showed up... they didn't have it... I WAS PISSED. Apparently some "new employee" sold it by accident. I demanded my money in CASH and they gave me the full value of the DVDs in cash so I could go across the hall and buy it at Best Buy (with cash to spare all said and done). I never bothered pre-ordering ANYTHING after that... the only thing a pre-order "guarantees" is that the store will get your money, it certainly doesn't guarantee that you'll actually get the product.
For the Xbox 360 I Went to Sam's Club, they opened at 7, I hopped in line around 5 and even when they opened their doors they only had about 15 people in line when they had 20 consoles...
I know where I'll be buying my Wii, Fsk Pre-orders.
hmm, interesting... I'm probably the most "hardcore" out of all of my friends, but the other ones that I would consider to be more then just casual gamers are the ones that are interested in the Wii... the ones that I would consider to be casual gamers are the ones that seem pretty appathetic about it reguardless of how much I rave about it. The only one from that group interested in the Wii is someone who considers themself a Nintendo fantaic, even has a tri-force tatoo (despite the fact that she hasn't owned a console since the SNES).
I think most of my casual gamers friends are pretty set on not going Sony this time around, Now that I think of it the ones that are interested in the Xbox 360 are probably only that way because they've played it at my house and been throughly WOWed.
Wii is the first console to ever really excite me. I've never owned a single Nintendo machine, but I would be more than willing to part cash to get my hands on this. While I appreciate I can only speak for myself, if Nintendo is winning over people who've never had an interest in them before...
While I think the Wii definitely has the potential it seems to at present only be winning over those people who have a pulse on the game industry. Those friends of mine IRL all seem to range from indifferent about the Wii to not knowing anything about it. Most people either own an Xbox 360 or claim that it looks nice but doesn't have the games they want. Out of the former PS2 owners I know about 3/4 of them have sworn Sony off altogether as crazy based on their pricing and the other 1/4 wants it no matter how much they charge "you know, because it's Sony..." Though that number even seems to be dropping by the day.
I'd say Microsoft and Nintendo could run away with this next generation if they learn to market it well... get the Wii-Mote in peoples hands through kiosks, show off TV adds for all the different games in your library etc. If they could out-market Sony and publicly ridicule their price point then they'd have a fighting chance to combat the people who will buy the PS3 just because it's the sequel to the PS2.
I'm actually impressed... Not only that a state is trying the more appropriate method before resorting to passing more laws but even more so that it's Georgia of all states that is leading by example. Nothing against Georgia but it's not one of the states I would have guessed to be the first for something like this.
Slashdot Mirror
not most... ALL
IIRC it's a requirement that all XBLA games have a free trial version (which is really just the full version but locked out of full functionality)
As for the articles clam that the arbitrary point system is to confuse people, I'd have to disagree. I thought the same at first myself but after using it for a while I actually think it's a great idea... The Xbox Live Marketplace is GLOBAL if something costs 400MP in the Us then it also costs 400MP in Canada and 400MP all through Europe and 400MP in Japan. Rather then trying to localize the price of things for every currency in the world they just made their own pay scale, and IMO it works really well.
After having purchased a few things it becomes easy to follow. in US dollars 400MP = $5 exactly considering most game expansion packs, XBLA games (pretty much anything other then themes and pictures) cost 200, 400, 800, or 1200 it's fairly simple to figure out in your head how much they're worth in real money.
As for Lumines being the most expensive XBLA game to date, it's really not all that bad considering the PSP version is a whole lot more expensive, Not to mention you'll be able to play the free demo version to your hearts content before deciding to actually buy it.
Well I don't actually download anything that **AAs would care about. Just figured that if I DID ever pirate anything they'd care about it might make for a clean escape... Thanks for the tips though
Most of the time I use a torrent client "installed" (IIRC it doesn't actually install it's just an executable) and cached to that drive. Everything downloads straight there and then I'll copy it to one of the other drives if I need to do anything to it. Any ideas where one would lock down traceability further?
I think people are forgetting the whole point about the ESRB raitings and why they're under debate here. The argument that Dr. Thompson is making is that the ESRB raiting are flawed. What she seems to be forgetting is that no matter how you decide to rate the games (even if by her own definition PacMan is considered 62% violent) the whole POINT of the ESRB raitings is to give the common consumer who hasn't played the game an idea of the kind of content contained on the disc. If the common consumer doesn't agree with a 62% rating for PacMan then it doesn't work plain and simple.
THAT is the point Stanton is trying to make... basically that the average consumer finds the current ESRB system more useful to their purchasing decisions then the system used by Dr. Thompson. Reguardless of educational background, as a VIDEO GAME CONSUMER I agree whole heartedly, I do in-fact find the current ESRB system more useful then the one suggested by Dr. Thompson.
Tetris 0% !!! ...My God the Thompsons are right, you've been desensitized!
WONT SOMEONE THINK OF THE BRICKS!
yeah I've heard of some extreme cases where they were able to swap out the control board with a fresh one to get the data out (if you were hardcore and had access to a clean room you might be able to swap out the platters too)
The best way to destroy data on a hard drive is to open it up and smash the platters, if your in a hurry a bulk tape eraser or other large magnetic device is also good.
As for myself I keep all my downloads on an external USB 2.0 drive, simply unplug it and poof, it's as if the data was never on the machine in the first place. Of course this is just a happy consequence of my machine, being that it's liquid-cooled two hard drives are mounted to a cooler, I needed more space so rather then ripping one of the smaller ones out I just put it in an enclosure.
I thought that was part of the virtual console for the Wii, I seem to remeber hearing about a $200 dev kit but I can't remember for sure.
It sounds like our experiences in PC gaming differ. To be honest I haven't played a PC game in the last two or three years. However all of the issues I mentioned were problems I did actually face that turned me away from PCs as a gaming platform. Being that I haven't gamed on a PC in years the rig I have NOW is about that old and would only be good for my day to day non-gaming tasks... that 2nd rig that I would buy would have to be my gaming machine.
I do frequently buy games the day they come out. I've been anticipating a games release, picked them up at EB or wherever when they first came out only to get through the install and find that there was some bug that made the game not run on my machine due to a hardware incompatability. The store wont take it back because it's open software and I basically have to sit on my hands until the developer gets around to patching it. (it's happened to me more then once) The real kick in the nuts is if the price drops or a sale happens before the patch comes out.
As for tweaking the controls, I loath playing games with a keyboard and mouse, using a gamepad or other controller for PC gaming is no big deal but in my experience games rarely have default controls for gamepads and sometimes you'll have to do some digging to find the right ini to edit which can be even more painful if you're trying to use analog controls. If you do it a lot you get better at it, if you only play one or two games you don't have to set things up that often. but I play A LOT of games, I rarely watch TV or Movies, I game. The hardest part of "installing" a console game is removing the plastic wrapper from the case.
Call me lazy but the added cost and hassle just wasn't worth it to me. IMO PCs offer 2 distinct advantages 1.Better graphics (this gab narrows and widens all the time and depends on hardware) and 2. user mods.
Graphically: PCs will almost always have the edge when compairing a console to bleeding edge PC hardware, however compairing cross platoform with moderatly priced PC I find the difference to be more then forgivable considering the difference in price. For instance Oblivion on a mid-high range PC is only moderatly superior then the Xbox 360 counterpart, even the Xbox 1 version of Spliter Cell Chaos Theory looked as good as the PC version (abeit lower res). As someone who typically plays through a game and then shelves it and plays something new stuff like user mods don't really interest me. I get bored with games too fast, probably why I never got into MMOs and why graphical increases down the road don't do much for me since I've already finished with the game and moved on to new games.
I used to be a PC gamer but eventually it was just too much of a hassle, spending sometimes hours installing, finding the patches you need, WAITING for the patches you need if they aren't out for your hardware yet, then spending sometimes hours tweaking the controls the way you like them, leaning the good servers for each of your games, and to top it all off I'm still sitting at my desk staring at a 19" screen and crappy cube speakers... the same thing I just did all day at work.... Walk down into my basement and I have a big comfy sectional couch, a DLP projector shooting onto a 94" wide screen, and big theater quality speakers (not the crappy surround sound in a box type). My controller is wireless, I can just pop in the disc and INSTANTLY play without having to install anything, without waiting for patches, without having to tweak my controls, without having to tweak my graphics, without having to research where the good online servers are. I can just come home any enjoy my gaming. Sure I could get a wireless controller for my PC and put my PC down there in the home theater room, but I don't just use my PC for gaming, I do web development, email, internet browsing. I'd pretty much have to either buy a 2nd PC or haul it up and down the stairs every time I wanted to play games, yeah I could maybe buy a laptop, but then it's not very upgradable... not to mention it still doesn't remedy all the time I've wasted in setup and configuration before I can even fully enjoy my game.
But besides all of that... the BIGGEST reason I play games on a console instead of a PC is really quite simple... Do you know of a PC that can play Dead or Alive 4 or Project Gotham Racing 3? Most of the games I like to play are ONLY available on consoles. The PC space is mostly filled with MMORPGs, FPSs, and RTSs with the occasional big franchise title from another genre. The games might be a little more expensive on consoles (but I rent my games so that's not a problem). If you figure consoles will get you $300 to $400 every 5 years, heck even the PS3 at $500 to $600 is still less then you'd have to spend on PC upgrades annually, and if you're not gaming on a PC then you don't need much. Heck my machine is an AMD 2600, with 512MB ram and a GeForce2, the most intensive thing I use on it is Photoshop but even that doesn't really give me any problems. Without having to spend money on my machine I have a lot more time and money left over to spend on other stuff.
I can see why PC gamers get defensive when the console argument comes up though, most PC gamers build their own rigs, it's made of their blood sweat and tears and a lot of time and money invested... trying to convince them that console gaming is better is like trying to convince a mother that her baby is ugly.
Would you care if your employer refused to let you take smoke breaks during the day, or not even let you smoke on company property (as in you'd have to walk out PAST the parking lot to smoke). My employer does, first it was no smoking in the building (no problems there), then it was no smoking within 30ft of the building because people in the window offices didn't like it (ok, understandable), then it was no smoking anywhere but two small designated areas outside because they didn't like the cigarettes creating a line 30ft around the building parameter (a bit annoying but..), then they banned smoking on company property altogether (because being smoke free is trendy), then they banned taking smoke breaks because it was taking people too long when they had to walk all the way off campus to smoke.
How far do you take it? My company went from an open internet to filtering almost everything. Now we often joke that with all the securities we can't even get our REAL work done. Trying to access the FTP site of a company we buy software from to get the latest version of their app... NOPE ALL FTP access has been blocked, it took me two weeks to get permission and my project was late because of it. Writing code if I'm having trouble figuring out how to do a particular technique I'll often search online to see if there is any example code for what I'm trying to do or if there have been similar questions asked in any of the popular programing forums and newsgroups... NOPE all blocked now so instead of finding what I need within 10 minutes and moving on with my work I have to trudge through our out-dated dead tree resources which can sometimes take hours and other times provide no solution at all... in which case I have to write down what I was looking for and search when I get home.
I can understand blocking pages like myspace, eBay or ESPN if you've got a problem with people spending all day there instead of doing work but how far do you take it? I enjoy reading Slashdot on my breaks or browsing eBay and youtube on my lunch hour. That's a Perk right there. Working late at night it's nice to take a break from the code and just surf for a bit to relax and refresh...
If there's a problem with people surfing instead of working, and you've spoken too them about it and it's STILL a problem, then fine block some of the popular non-work related sites, at that point it was obviously a privilege that was abused... but instituting a company wide policy that blocks just about everything only shows that you don't trust your own employees which can degrade the employer/employee relationship.
I think the intent of the article is that the internet today is the modern day equivalent of quietly listening to the radio or reading the news paper on your breaks, webmail is more like making the occasional personal phone call. If employees want to steal stuff then they're going to steal stuff. Locking down web access (among other things) shows a lack of trust in the employees, and without trust it can make your employees feel more like caged rats as opposed to part of the companies "family".
Not to mention taking those restrictions so far that they start to dramatically cut into real work uses is enough to make your employees seek new employers.
exciting? maybe.. happy? ..with out a doubt.
As someone who was born and raised in Massachusetts I think it would be a disgrace to the great country of Canada mixing them up like that.
Was this a phone conversation?
And if so, was the part of Sam L. played by a 13 year old using an internet soundboard?
Most recently she played through Oblivion and has started on Ninety-Nine Nights. She's also a fan of games like the Sims, the Final Fantasy Series and even Soul Calibur.
There are three elements I've found that most appeal to females when it comes to games:
It's not very difficult to appeal to female gamers, Most games that we have today could incorporate minimal changes to open up the market to a whole new demographic. The problem is that most of these industry types will bark about how we need to do something yet seemingly haven't even taken the time to sit down with existing female games and find out why they like the games they do. Your stereotypical female gamer
I can see it now... the hand gesture for masterbation now becomes the hand gesture for playing with your Wii... oh... wait...
Well I think he's right on some levels... of course if you found such a pattern you'd want to keep it to yourself... but if you DID releases it what would happen... everyone would try to trade based on that pattern and then the pattern would no longer exist because people changed their habits once they saw the pattern. It's almost paradoxical.
Thinking about computers looking for patterns and you've got almost the same thing. The more computer controller traders you've got then the more predictable the market will become, if you've got everyone trading with a similar AI then wouldn't the market reach a sort of equilibrium where just about everyone ends up with the roughly same amount of money they put in it?
Sellers might be the ones DIRECTLY paying eBay... but the root of the money trail starts with the buyer. Where else do you think those sellers got money to pay for the auction listing (heck most of them include the eBay fees in the shipping costs). If eBay's management has so much as half a brain they'll realize this.
As someone who frequently buys as well as sells on eBay (about 50/50) I can completely agree with a BLIND feedback system.. Leave feedback within 30 days of auction end until both parties have left feedback neither will be visible. If the time reaches 30 days and only 1 party has left feedback then it becomes viewable and the other party forfeits their ability to leave feedback.
As both a buyer and a seller I definitely wouldn't like it if the seller was forced to leave feedback first. Typically I wait for some kind of conformation from the buyer that they received the item I sent them and that they're happy with it. IMO the transaction isn't complete until it's complete for BOTH parties.
FWIW she's 25 and in NH. She's engaged, and trust me no matter how cool a tri-force tattoo migh be YOU DON'T WANT HER. On second though why don't you come up here and sweep her away... I'm sure her husband to be would be more then happy about that, he seems quite misrible with her. Not that it really has anything to do with her gaming preferences.
I've been burned too many times by pre-orders in the past I just stopped bothering... The very last pre-order I did was for the original Star wars Trilogy Box set. I was selling some used DVDs to EB and they had a promotion where if you give them X amount of DVDs they'd double their value towards a pre-order or something... I figured I'd put in for Star Wars because I was planning on buying it anyway and I was getting "such a great deal", with the DVDs I put in and the bonus the Box Set got paid for in full. Release day came I went to the store: "oh... we already gave out all our pre-orders, we don't have any more for sale"... this was aggravating because the store wasn't exactly anywhere near where I lived, quite out of the way in-fact, I browsed around the mall and felt pretty depressed that every other store that sold DVDs had them sitting on shelves yet I had already paid for it and somehow not yet had it in my hands. They called me the next week and told me that had it in, I showed up... they didn't have it... I WAS PISSED. Apparently some "new employee" sold it by accident. I demanded my money in CASH and they gave me the full value of the DVDs in cash so I could go across the hall and buy it at Best Buy (with cash to spare all said and done). I never bothered pre-ordering ANYTHING after that... the only thing a pre-order "guarantees" is that the store will get your money, it certainly doesn't guarantee that you'll actually get the product.
For the Xbox 360 I Went to Sam's Club, they opened at 7, I hopped in line around 5 and even when they opened their doors they only had about 15 people in line when they had 20 consoles...
I know where I'll be buying my Wii, Fsk Pre-orders.
hmm, interesting... I'm probably the most "hardcore" out of all of my friends, but the other ones that I would consider to be more then just casual gamers are the ones that are interested in the Wii... the ones that I would consider to be casual gamers are the ones that seem pretty appathetic about it reguardless of how much I rave about it. The only one from that group interested in the Wii is someone who considers themself a Nintendo fantaic, even has a tri-force tatoo (despite the fact that she hasn't owned a console since the SNES).
I think most of my casual gamers friends are pretty set on not going Sony this time around, Now that I think of it the ones that are interested in the Xbox 360 are probably only that way because they've played it at my house and been throughly WOWed.
I'd say Microsoft and Nintendo could run away with this next generation if they learn to market it well... get the Wii-Mote in peoples hands through kiosks, show off TV adds for all the different games in your library etc. If they could out-market Sony and publicly ridicule their price point then they'd have a fighting chance to combat the people who will buy the PS3 just because it's the sequel to the PS2.
I'm actually impressed... Not only that a state is trying the more appropriate method before resorting to passing more laws but even more so that it's Georgia of all states that is leading by example. Nothing against Georgia but it's not one of the states I would have guessed to be the first for something like this.