Classics had 2 things going for them. they either:
A. Left a lot to your imagination in terms of graphics or story, or
B. Gave you fantastic twitch gameplay
But the classics that still stand today are the ones with the twitch game play: Pac Man, Galaxan, Mario Bros, Tetris, etc.
I think we'll see a revival of "new classics" soon through venues like the Xbox Live arcade. I mean look at Geometry Wars or Wik. Those games totally embody what made the twitch type classic games great but they're done with and actually utilize modern technology.
As for MS allowing people to make their own content, it's comingsoon.
Your argument doesn't make any sense; games of today have much better special effects AND a much better story.
There are a lot of "classic" games that I enjoy though I very rarely find myself enjoying much before the 16bit era when I look at classics.
I think we're forgetting that the generations of 'ol had a much higher % of crap to good titles, and we seem to only remember the good ones. Sure todays market has crap titles and rip-offs etc. but back in the day there was even MORE of that then there is today. Yeah Mario was great but there were literally 10s if not 100s of crappy rip-offs that followed it, titles so bad we don't even think about them, they'll never appear on a greatest hits, and they'll never get a modern day sequel.
The funny thing is one of the Frats at my Alma Mater was nick named the "mac frat" because they required all of their brethren to use mac products over alternatives whenever possible....
Calling PC users frat-boys is pretty rediculous... If anything it's the mac users that more often consider themselves in some kind of "exclusive club".
I've considered the switch myself but a good number of the applications I use daily on the PC don't have mac counterparts. Sure the macs can handle the general use stuff (word processing/web browsing/email) but I'm not about to buy one JUST FOR THAT. I have devices that aren't computers at all that can even handle that stuff, like my cell phone for instance...
Would be modifiers could simply set the chip that holds the firmware into write protect mode. Just about every chip of that nature I know of has a hardware switch to write protect/write enable. If you threw that switch after you re-flashed the firmware the Xbox could try all it wanted and never re-flash the firmware.
As for the Xbox Live bannings, It will probably work just like the Xbox 1, in that they accounts will never be banned but the CONSOLE is. That is each console has an eprom that contains some unique data. If Xbox Live detects that it's modded (check sum on the bios) it deletes all the data on the eprom and re-flashes it with some generic "don't let the console on Xbox live" data.
Most people hacking these things wont be on Xbox Live though...
I don't think you full understand what the achievements in question really are...
I actually own the game, there are 2 achievements that deal with replay clips:
1. Share a replay clip online. Basically you play a level and you can save up to 30 seconds of the replay into a clip and share it online. it goes onto the EA servers somewhere and once it's there other people can view it. NO WHERE does it require you to even mention it's existence to anyone. Simply that you create it and put it on the servers where others can access it.
2. The "Celebrity" Achievement. This achievement is what is referred to as an "Exclusive Achievement". Which is any achievement that only a few people in the entire world will have. Quake 4 and Ghost Recon both have similar achievement that you can only earn by reaching Rank #1 on the online leaderboards... This achievement in Burnout can only be earned if your video is one of the top 20 most downloaded Burnout videos. Again no where does it require you to tell a single person of the videos existence or spam anyone.
The problem is that EA/Criterion essentially included a video notification (read: spam) tool, so every Xbox 360 owner who also has a myspace account gets the idea that they could somehow get into the top 20 by constantly spamming everyone they know or come in contact with.
The real kicker is that its literally impossible for someone to see the clip unless A. they have and are playing the burnout game, and B. they're on your friends list or you recently played with them. Unless both of those criteria are met you can't view anyone's clips... UNLESS the clip is in the top 20, then anyone with the game can view the top 20... So what happens is the top 20 are continually solidifying their position in the top 20, because those are really the only videos most people have easy access to. Even worse then that more then half of the videos in the top 20 are dated PRE RELEASE of the game, meaning they're probably left over from testing and industry insiders who received a copy early, which makes the achievement even more exclusive and harder to earn.
There's nothing wrong with the achievements but shame on EA for including the spam feature to give people false hopes of getting their clip in the top 20.
I loved the Dreamcast myself and I whole heartedly agree about the awesome graphics and launch titles.
But the Dreamcast was the sequel to one of the worst selling consoles in history. THATS what killed it. It didn't matter if they gave the things away.
Not to mention it was marketed pretty poorly, in comparison to the Sony Hype Machine(tm).
Those that did consider buying the Dreamcast were duped by Sony into waiting for their superior PS2, what with it's competitive online service and hard drive that would be coming out within the first year to compete with the Dreamcast and the promise of the "Emotion Engine" so powerful it could calculate human emotions. Rumors that derelict countries were buying them up for use as missile controllers because they were mini-super-computers... do you remember all that? THATS why the Dreamcast lost to the PS2..
MS on the other hand had a slow start with the Xbox 1 and by the time the 360 rolled around the Xbox 1 was really giving the PS2 a run for it's money in US, Europe, Australia, etc. Weekly consoles sales were close to 50/50 for the two consoles, despite PS2's larger "install base".
The only way the Dreamcast comparison would work is if the Xbox 1 fell on it's face in the first year, all the 3rd parties left it for dead and MS didn't have anything for about a year leading up to the 360... But that didn't happen so it's not worth comparing.
Brand recognition and the association with that brand sells a console more then anything else, Sony could polish a turd and sell it for $500 a pop at this point and you couldn't keep those things in stock. Sega during the Dreamcast era was walking around with a Scarlet Letter called "SATURN". MS is in neither situation, they're coming off of a lot of building momentum set in place from the Xbox 1. Considering how well the Xbox 1 did launching a year and a half after the PS2 in the states and europe I'd say they're making a sequel to a VERY successful console right now.
Yeah MS is doing pretty poor in Japan (worse then the Xbox 1 if that's even possible) But they're doing great in the states... they might not have a "dominant" market-share over video games in general but they have 100% market-share of the next-gen (even Japan... there's no competition). Also the fact that you STILL can't just go to a store and buy one, and pre-orders entered before launch STILL haven't been filled in some places in the US and Europe should say something about it's popularity. In the few months it's been out in the US it's already sold more then the Xbox 1 did in it's first year.
Say what you will about Japan but Sony will have an uphill battle in the US if they wait till 07 to launch there.
I agree, I believe we've already started to see the anti-video-game parade reach it's apex, now a lot of those same people are putting down some of the video game hatred and starting in on myspace and live journal as being the next best worst thing for your children.
It's definitely not a new thing...
I graduated from RPI 2 years ago, and I, as well as all other students in my class were required to have a notebook computer starting our freshmen year. And we weren't even the first class (freshmen students from '99 on were required to have a notebook computer).
It didn't matter what we had for a computer, but the school offered Thinkpads at a substantial discount. I got mine for free as part of my Financial Aid package.
That's pretty much what I'm doing, I've got an 800x600 DLP projector, (so I get great widescreen 480i/p with currently available DVDs) it can also eek out a hair better looking picture for 720p HD stuff (like my Xbox games). If it holds me over till Q4 07 when all the cool new tech comes out that'll be fine by me. CED, OLED, 4K LCOS, LED/DLP system, all of which are poised to blow away the currently available tech in every aspect including cost.
I wont be adopting a new disc format until I have a decent idea which one has a better shot at winning the war, and the the price comes down.
What you got with your video card isn't a "converter" it's an "adapter". it doesn't convert anything just changes the shape of the connector. There are two flavors of DVI. DVI-I which carries both digital (similar to HDMI) and analog (similar to VGA) signals. Then there is DVI-D which only carries the digital portion of the signal and no analog.
Those cheap "adapters" you got with your video car simply reshape the DVI connector into VGA and ignore all of the digital data present. They do this because there isn't much real-estate on a single PCI slot in the back of your computer, hence the adapter. Most often DVI-I is found in PC applications while DVI-D is used in the HDTV world (and more recently HDMI, which is essentially the same as DVI-D but with digital sound as well).
TRUE DVI to VGA "converters" actually accept the digital portion of the signal and have active circuitry that does A to D conversion (be it VGA or component/color-stream). Those converters can easily cost upward of $200 and that's without breaking any HDCP protection (IANAL but yes that would probably go against the DMCA).
Since HDCP can only reside in a digital signal it means that the output of the HD-DVD players is either going to be:
A. HDMI (digital only)
B. DVI-D (digital only) or
C. DVI-I but with the analog portion of the video stripped down.
Just because you have HDMI or DVI doesn't mean you're safe either, most displays that have those are still missing the all important HDCP decoding ability so they're just as useless as a display that only does analog.
I'm mostly curious how this will play out when we get PC HD-DVD Drives considering I don't know of any monitors (short of those that double as HDTVs) that feature HDCP support.
I'm also curious how this will work with the Xbox 360 that will supposedly have an external HD-DVD drive, considering it doesn't offer any digital outputs to speak of.
IMO the whole idea is really stupid as 99% of piracy will occur at the disc level, stripping the movie right off the disc. When was the last time you heard of someone pirating a song by using a line out of their CD player or the video out of their DVD player?
Slashdot Mirror
Classics had 2 things going for them. they either:
A. Left a lot to your imagination in terms of graphics or story, or
B. Gave you fantastic twitch gameplay
But the classics that still stand today are the ones with the twitch game play: Pac Man, Galaxan, Mario Bros, Tetris, etc.
I think we'll see a revival of "new classics" soon through venues like the Xbox Live arcade. I mean look at Geometry Wars or Wik. Those games totally embody what made the twitch type classic games great but they're done with and actually utilize modern technology.
As for MS allowing people to make their own content, it's coming soon.
Your argument doesn't make any sense; games of today have much better special effects AND a much better story.
There are a lot of "classic" games that I enjoy though I very rarely find myself enjoying much before the 16bit era when I look at classics.
I think we're forgetting that the generations of 'ol had a much higher % of crap to good titles, and we seem to only remember the good ones. Sure todays market has crap titles and rip-offs etc. but back in the day there was even MORE of that then there is today. Yeah Mario was great but there were literally 10s if not 100s of crappy rip-offs that followed it, titles so bad we don't even think about them, they'll never appear on a greatest hits, and they'll never get a modern day sequel.
The funny thing is one of the Frats at my Alma Mater was nick named the "mac frat" because they required all of their brethren to use mac products over alternatives whenever possible....
Calling PC users frat-boys is pretty rediculous... If anything it's the mac users that more often consider themselves in some kind of "exclusive club".
I've considered the switch myself but a good number of the applications I use daily on the PC don't have mac counterparts. Sure the macs can handle the general use stuff (word processing/web browsing/email) but I'm not about to buy one JUST FOR THAT. I have devices that aren't computers at all that can even handle that stuff, like my cell phone for instance...
Would be modifiers could simply set the chip that holds the firmware into write protect mode. Just about every chip of that nature I know of has a hardware switch to write protect/write enable. If you threw that switch after you re-flashed the firmware the Xbox could try all it wanted and never re-flash the firmware.
As for the Xbox Live bannings, It will probably work just like the Xbox 1, in that they accounts will never be banned but the CONSOLE is. That is each console has an eprom that contains some unique data. If Xbox Live detects that it's modded (check sum on the bios) it deletes all the data on the eprom and re-flashes it with some generic "don't let the console on Xbox live" data.
Most people hacking these things wont be on Xbox Live though...
he better not die, he said he was going to get me out of summer school!
I don't think you full understand what the achievements in question really are...
I actually own the game, there are 2 achievements that deal with replay clips:
1. Share a replay clip online. Basically you play a level and you can save up to 30 seconds of the replay into a clip and share it online. it goes onto the EA servers somewhere and once it's there other people can view it. NO WHERE does it require you to even mention it's existence to anyone. Simply that you create it and put it on the servers where others can access it.
2. The "Celebrity" Achievement. This achievement is what is referred to as an "Exclusive Achievement". Which is any achievement that only a few people in the entire world will have. Quake 4 and Ghost Recon both have similar achievement that you can only earn by reaching Rank #1 on the online leaderboards... This achievement in Burnout can only be earned if your video is one of the top 20 most downloaded Burnout videos. Again no where does it require you to tell a single person of the videos existence or spam anyone.
The problem is that EA/Criterion essentially included a video notification (read: spam) tool, so every Xbox 360 owner who also has a myspace account gets the idea that they could somehow get into the top 20 by constantly spamming everyone they know or come in contact with.
The real kicker is that its literally impossible for someone to see the clip unless A. they have and are playing the burnout game, and B. they're on your friends list or you recently played with them. Unless both of those criteria are met you can't view anyone's clips... UNLESS the clip is in the top 20, then anyone with the game can view the top 20... So what happens is the top 20 are continually solidifying their position in the top 20, because those are really the only videos most people have easy access to. Even worse then that more then half of the videos in the top 20 are dated PRE RELEASE of the game, meaning they're probably left over from testing and industry insiders who received a copy early, which makes the achievement even more exclusive and harder to earn.
There's nothing wrong with the achievements but shame on EA for including the spam feature to give people false hopes of getting their clip in the top 20.
I loved the Dreamcast myself and I whole heartedly agree about the awesome graphics and launch titles.
But the Dreamcast was the sequel to one of the worst selling consoles in history. THATS what killed it. It didn't matter if they gave the things away.
Not to mention it was marketed pretty poorly, in comparison to the Sony Hype Machine(tm).
Those that did consider buying the Dreamcast were duped by Sony into waiting for their superior PS2, what with it's competitive online service and hard drive that would be coming out within the first year to compete with the Dreamcast and the promise of the "Emotion Engine" so powerful it could calculate human emotions. Rumors that derelict countries were buying them up for use as missile controllers because they were mini-super-computers... do you remember all that? THATS why the Dreamcast lost to the PS2..
MS on the other hand had a slow start with the Xbox 1 and by the time the 360 rolled around the Xbox 1 was really giving the PS2 a run for it's money in US, Europe, Australia, etc. Weekly consoles sales were close to 50/50 for the two consoles, despite PS2's larger "install base".
The only way the Dreamcast comparison would work is if the Xbox 1 fell on it's face in the first year, all the 3rd parties left it for dead and MS didn't have anything for about a year leading up to the 360... But that didn't happen so it's not worth comparing.
Brand recognition and the association with that brand sells a console more then anything else, Sony could polish a turd and sell it for $500 a pop at this point and you couldn't keep those things in stock. Sega during the Dreamcast era was walking around with a Scarlet Letter called "SATURN". MS is in neither situation, they're coming off of a lot of building momentum set in place from the Xbox 1. Considering how well the Xbox 1 did launching a year and a half after the PS2 in the states and europe I'd say they're making a sequel to a VERY successful console right now.
Yeah MS is doing pretty poor in Japan (worse then the Xbox 1 if that's even possible) But they're doing great in the states... they might not have a "dominant" market-share over video games in general but they have 100% market-share of the next-gen (even Japan... there's no competition). Also the fact that you STILL can't just go to a store and buy one, and pre-orders entered before launch STILL haven't been filled in some places in the US and Europe should say something about it's popularity. In the few months it's been out in the US it's already sold more then the Xbox 1 did in it's first year.
Say what you will about Japan but Sony will have an uphill battle in the US if they wait till 07 to launch there.
I agree, I believe we've already started to see the anti-video-game parade reach it's apex, now a lot of those same people are putting down some of the video game hatred and starting in on myspace and live journal as being the next best worst thing for your children.
It's definitely not a new thing... I graduated from RPI 2 years ago, and I, as well as all other students in my class were required to have a notebook computer starting our freshmen year. And we weren't even the first class (freshmen students from '99 on were required to have a notebook computer). It didn't matter what we had for a computer, but the school offered Thinkpads at a substantial discount. I got mine for free as part of my Financial Aid package.
SPAM you just got SERVED!
I wont be adopting a new disc format until I have a decent idea which one has a better shot at winning the war, and the the price comes down.
What you got with your video card isn't a "converter" it's an "adapter". it doesn't convert anything just changes the shape of the connector. There are two flavors of DVI. DVI-I which carries both digital (similar to HDMI) and analog (similar to VGA) signals. Then there is DVI-D which only carries the digital portion of the signal and no analog.
Those cheap "adapters" you got with your video car simply reshape the DVI connector into VGA and ignore all of the digital data present. They do this because there isn't much real-estate on a single PCI slot in the back of your computer, hence the adapter. Most often DVI-I is found in PC applications while DVI-D is used in the HDTV world (and more recently HDMI, which is essentially the same as DVI-D but with digital sound as well).
TRUE DVI to VGA "converters" actually accept the digital portion of the signal and have active circuitry that does A to D conversion (be it VGA or component/color-stream). Those converters can easily cost upward of $200 and that's without breaking any HDCP protection (IANAL but yes that would probably go against the DMCA).
Since HDCP can only reside in a digital signal it means that the output of the HD-DVD players is either going to be:
A. HDMI (digital only)
B. DVI-D (digital only) or
C. DVI-I but with the analog portion of the video stripped down.
Just because you have HDMI or DVI doesn't mean you're safe either, most displays that have those are still missing the all important HDCP decoding ability so they're just as useless as a display that only does analog.
I'm mostly curious how this will play out when we get PC HD-DVD Drives considering I don't know of any monitors (short of those that double as HDTVs) that feature HDCP support.
I'm also curious how this will work with the Xbox 360 that will supposedly have an external HD-DVD drive, considering it doesn't offer any digital outputs to speak of.
IMO the whole idea is really stupid as 99% of piracy will occur at the disc level, stripping the movie right off the disc. When was the last time you heard of someone pirating a song by using a line out of their CD player or the video out of their DVD player?