A) The longer civilians can hold out without the military, the more likely it is the military will switch sides.
Not necessarily, There have been sieges in the US that have lasted months and no-one switched sides. They have been fighting civilians in Iraq for a decade and how many mass defections have we seen.
The military will side with the side that it feels is right, even if it is a tyrannical government (see the Chinese for a good example, few westerners would say what the Chinese are doing to Tibet or their own citizens is right but the army hasn't changed sides because _they_ believe they are right).
B) You ignore the trouble the US military has had dealing with insurgents over the past decade.
You ignore the fact this is happening in a foreign country where there is zero support from the locals. When you have defectors, collaborators and quislings aiding the military it becomes a lot less effective, in any civil war there is going to be "patriots" who will go to great lengths to support the government against the "insurgents". In Iraq and Afghanistan, none of the locals want to help the invaders.
You also ignore that even after a decade of resistance, they are yet to dislodge the invaders. The US going bankrupt isn't even managing to do a proper job of it.
C) See the first American Revolution.
Hmm, in the US revolution, the majority of the people who joined the militia were in the colonial military. The English did not maintain a large standing army in many of their colonies. India was protected primarily by Indians, America was protected primarily by Americans. The British invested most of the military power into their navy. So you're really adding to the GP's point here.
George Washington was a colonel in the colonial militia before the revolution. A trained and experienced soldier fighting the French and Indians (American natives) over 20 years before the revolution began.
Beyond this, the colonial militia in 1775 had muskets, horses and no armour. Hunters had muskets, horses and no armour. Cannon was the most dangerous weapon but they weren't as decisive as people think (easily flanked by cavalry or just keep the infantry walking forward. Cannons had a range of maybe 1 KM. Add to this that no-one maintained professional armies, they were raised as needed from peasants and conscripts, at best they maintained a militia.
In 2012, the army has tanks, jets, guided missiles, artillery, helicopters a working logistics and support chain as well as highly trained professional soldiers. Meanwhile the civilians have rednecks with rifles who've drunk too much Red Bull.
The civilians will find very few sources to replenish their arms and munitions. In the US revolution the French provided a lot of arms (cannon in particular) just to spite the British. The Syrian civilians are having a lot of trouble against the Assad government despite the fact that the Assad government is having as much trouble getting new weapons and munitions as the civilians.
I've got a PC (which, thanks to my job is kept pretty up to date with eng samples from intel, amd and nvidia) and I've got an XBox and PS3, i play games on all of them (probably the ps3 not as much mainly because i prefer the xbox controller) and I don't see any reason why I would abandon the consoles to play on the PC exclusively even though it is a pretty decent PC. They all have their place.
The problem you have is that you are not the average console player.
Consoles are primarily played by casual players. The Wii outsold the Xbox and Playstation 2:1 until they both dropped their prices to cater for the casual market. The average console player plays Mario Kart, Wii Sports, Rock Band and the like. The top selling game on the Xbox 360 is Kinect Adventures, Gran Turismo on the PS3 which is really an arcade game.Without the casual market, consoles cant compete against PC's which are more profitable per unit and a lot more powerful.
I've got a Wii, it's got it's place as a casual gaming device. Something I play with gamer and non-gamer friends alike. This is where consoles excel. I mean they do really well here. Simple, fun games.
The world isn't going to abandon consoles, but the PS3 and Xbox 360 were so unprofitable for so long that making another generation could easily sink Sony in it's current state, MS less so because they can afford subsidise their games and entertainment divisions. However Nintendo proved that causal was where the money was in consoles. Put simply, the console market is no longer supporting consoles like the Xbox 360 and Playstation (there's a long history of this in the console world, powerful consoles like the Turbo Grafx and 3DO were beaten by less powerful consoles because that was what the market wanted).
What I think is going to happen is that consoles and tablets will merge, they'll be tablets on the go but will have HDMI out and Bluetooth connectivity for controllers. Processing power is getting up there with Nvidia's Tegra 4. All that's needed is the back catalogue of games.
Battery life and cost. The damned thing is $999. I can buy quite a decent laptop for that, with similar or better specs, better battery life, and a lot more usability (since it's an actual laptop).
It's Razer, what do you expect. Razer charge A$70 for a DeathAdder mouse, I paid 300 Baht (less than A$10) for a near perfect copy (exact same internals, shape and weight, sans Razer branding).
When Android tablets came out, they cost as much as Ipads. As more competition got into the market and the unit cost lowered, prices decreased. You can still by a Galaxy Tab for A$6-700 but then again, I can get a Nexus 10 for A$400 (A$350 if I wanted to stuff about with imports).
It wont take long for tablet/console hybrids to drop in price. The biggest problem they have is the lack of a game back catalogue but with old games being resurrected on Android this wont be a problem for long.
Okay so I made a slip up but you didn't negate my point.
No, you went one further and proved my point.
Consoles are about casual, accessable games, this is the core of the console market.
There are so many deficencies with console hardware it's not funny. This is why there still isn't a successful strategy game on consoles. To make truely in depth games (I refuse to call them "hardcore") you need a platform that is extensible, not a limited platform.
But that's not how it MUST be.
But that is how it IS. That is how it HAS ALWAYS BEEN.
You're not going to break that cycle just because you wish it.
BTW, the NeoGeo and Turbo Grafx were so good that the companies who made them no longer exist. Feel free to go on about how technically superior the 3DO was too. You're proving my point for me. Hard core consoles pretending to be PC's just dont work.
I picked one random example out of the air where there are multiple competitors and no one in the press is screaming that one MUST DOMINATE OR ELSE.
You picked a random example out of thin air that DID NOT MAKE ANY SENSE as it does not relate one iota to the console gaming industry.
Stop pretending to know about things you clearly have no idea about.
Consoles depend on the casual gamer, mobile and console gaming now occupy the same market. As a result of this, the console and mobile gaming market will merge. PC-Pretenders will dispensary (like the Turbo Grafx and 3DO, which were both quite powerful but ultimately failures) as consoles become tablets that can connect to a TV and bluetooth input device to become traditional consoles.
The "winner" of at least the last three console wars was the cheapest console.
The Wii outsold the Xbox 360 and the PS3. At some points it was outselling them *combined*, until Microsoft and Sony dropped their prices.
This is exactly what I mean. The console market relies on the casual gamer for profitability. Not that there's anything wrong with casual gaming.
Of the last console generation I owned a PS2 and a Xbox360, I owned one game on each before the PS2 became a glorified DVD player (which is sucked at) but the Xbox fared better, chipped and running XBMC it served as a media centre until 2010, nether were useful gaming machines as any games released on them that I wanted to play came out on the PC anyway. This generation I bought a Wii and used it for playing games.
The real winner of the console wars was IBM, who made the CPU for the Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360.
Ouya, Gamestick, Piston, Shield, and all the other microconsoles... I'm not worried that the graphics will hold them back (well, maybe Gamestick). The thing that's more likely to keep them from succeeding is a small game library.
The first company to get a good back-catalogue wins. Probably Nintendo, they've got a good history at acquiring back catalogues of other console manufacturers (Sega, Atari).
The microconsoles you mentioned are pretty much version 1.0. They wont sell in huge numbers but will pave the way for future versions.
Consoles were also arcade-at-home devices. The funny controllers (joysticks, more than 2 buttons), and boxes with graphics that rivaled the arcade machines.
Exactly, the casual market grew out of the kinds of people who went to arcades. This is why old acrade games like Glaga, Tetris and Street Fighter remain console favourites.
Street fighter is an arcade game, you might be too young to remember but street fighter debued in the arcade (the arcade is where you played casual games before the home console became popular, you're probably too young to remember this too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_Fighter
First released in the arcade in 1987.
It's sad that we perpetuate myths, like consoles killed arcade games or there must be one dominant platform,
This is how it is in the console world. It was dog eat dog. Nintendo ate Atari and Sega, Sony tried to eat nintendo... The first company to release a decent tablet/console hybrid will eat the others (smart monies on Nintendo, they seem to understand the market).
The console market does not abide competition. Having three players is the largest it's ever been and right now, two of those three players will have trouble staying in the game.
As far as I know, neither Canon or Nikon have wiped each other off the map nor do they have plans to.
That's because you've got Pentax, Panasonic, Fijifilm, Olympus, Leica and many others competing in DLSR, Point and Shoot, Enthusiast and many other markets. Also Canon make more than just cameras. The only way this compares to consoles in when we ask "what happened to Kodak" and answer "they bet on film when the market went digital".
It's obvious you're young and haven't researched much about the console market, you might want to do that before making ill informed posts.
Seriously, do you think people WANT to phone quality graphics on a 60" TV? No, they don't even want to see it on a 15" laptop.
LoL, people like the Xbox 360 graphics, that's still standard def with no AA. The Wii is even weaker.
No-one except/. nerds are complaining about 1366 x 768 on their 15" laptops.
Beyond this, my 18 month old Acer Iconia (Tegra2) could easily output at 1080p with more AA than an Xbox 360 (as a member of the glorious PC gaming master race, it was still pitiful, but then again so are consoles).
I'll hit you with the clue by four. The Wii is so popular because it's fun. The upcoming tablet-consoles will be the same. People will buy it because it's cheap and accessible. Even the Xbox 360 and PS3 need the casual audience to survive, 40% of their sales came after the price drop in their respective units. People want cheaper consoles for casual gaming, as for so called "hardcore" gaming, well that's already heading back to the PC.
The so called "hardcore" console is doomed. There may well be another Xbox or Playstation but that will definitely be the last one. It took Microsoft and Sony half a decade to get their consoles making money, they are yet to recoup their total investment. Mobile gaming is growing and profitable. With improvements in mobile hardware it wont be long before we'll have tablet/console hybrids where you plug it into the TV via HDMI and use a bluetooth controller to create an instant console out of a tablet. Nintendo is half way there by putting tablets into the Wii U (which will make money, but wont be as big of a success as the Wii).
Anyone who thinks that console and mobile gaming don't occupy the same market is delusional.
The writing is on the wall for "PC pretenders" like the Xbox and PS, "hardcore" games will go back to the PC whilst the casual console will merge into a tablet form factor. Things like the OUYA are more of a proof of concept, it'll sell but it wont be a smashing success but that's the deal with version 1.0 products. The successors to the OUYA will put the nails into the current and "next-gen" consoles.
The console-killer always has been the good old PC. A reasonably specced-out PC with a mid-range graphics card is far, far better than any console. But nobody listens to me.
Well yes and no.
You may not be old enough to remember but back before the Playstation and Xbox PC-pretenders turned up consoles were about casual, accessible games like Mario Kart. PC's were about in depth games, shooters like Doom and adventure games like Star Control 2. Then the PS/XB pretenders came a long and pretended they could be "hardcore" gaming machines. This was until Nintendo released the Wii and proved that consoles were about casual, accessible games like Mario Kart and made money hand over fist whilst it took the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 half a decade to achieve profitability (the PS3 still hasn't recouped it's investment yet).
Now mobile is muscling in on the casual game and this is where the "traditional" console is doomed. Casual audiences will be attracted to the cheapness, ease of use and multiplayer capabilities of the tablet-consoles (Tabsoles, Conslets?) and "hardcore" games will come home, back to the PC.
- Aluminium instead of plastic (it increases the phone's weight unnecessarily, meaning more damage when it drops)
Whilst I agree with your other 3 points this one isn't that much of a factor. The tiny amount of aluminum doesn't make up that much weight and being metal, is quite maleable and more resistant to damage when dropped. Apple's problems are:
- Using glass where plastic or rubberised plastic is more suitable (such as the back of the phone).
- Extreme rigidity/lack of removable parts. When I drop my GNex, the battery cover comes off and takes with it some of the kinetic energy of the impact, the plastic casing also flexes.
- Glass again, this compared to plastic reduces grip and makes them more prone to dropping.
All in all, this is looking really hard for a drawback to online dating.
You're not looking very hard then.
Catching up with my sister at a coffee shop last week, hearing "you look very different from your profile picture" said quite a few times was hilarious.
I've always found online dating sites dodgy. The western oriented ones like OK Cupid end up pushing something. Some others like Date In Asia are often free advertisement for working ladies.
The market be damned. If I can tell at a glance whether a woman spells 'you' as a single vowel or not, society, traditional marriage, the divorce rate, whatever - it can all go to hell.
Unless you're in the market for a non-western woman, then the lack of English and Grammar skills can be considered a plus.
Can you release a moddable game through apple that has fake flags and names, and rely on modders to alter flags/names to whatever the user wants? Or does Apple have a lockdown on mods, too?
You mean a game engine where you can add your own assets like textures, skins and models... Given the fact Apple wont even let you have a file manager I doubt they'll let you have anything like this.
Sorry, compelling was the wrong word, I meant coercing. English is my second language;)
No problems, I was just being a pendant.
1. Calling that double dipping is stretching it.
Not really, They aren't charging a once off fee for a developer license. They are charging it yearly. Don't pay the fee and they take down your application.
That downloads figure includes all the free apps as well.
Free application developers still need to pay for the yearly license fee and Mac to develop on.
That would be pretty disingenuous given developer registration is free
And that statement is downright deceitful considering you need to pay the $99 yearly license fee to get you application listed. You still need to pay for the Mac to develop on regardless of if you release anything. A free developer registration only gives you the right to look, not to touch (as in release an application).
I haven't even consider the cost in man hours.
I've said it before, the only way to make money with mobile applications is to be the one the suckers who think they can make money on mobile applications hire to make their crappy apps... Given that work can be farmed off to the 3rd world Asian nation of your choice it's hardly a guaranteed success.
I have my app in the apple store and google play. There is nothing compelling me to use google play for example
Just to be a pendant,
There is something compelling you to use Google Play, the services and advantages you listed in your post. What you mean is there is nothing forcing you to use Google Play.
They charge 30%? you know what, they earned it.
This is a commission, standard procedure really. They're handling the store front, you're making the merchandise. It's worked well this way for centuries. This I have no issue with.
My problems with the Apple App store are:
1. They double dip. First you have to pay a yearly fee, then 30% of the income.
2. They total editorial control over what I can sell. If Google Play refuse to sell my application, I can go elsewhere (other app stores or sell it myself) with Apple, you're SOL and the reasons Apple reject your application seem whimsical and random.
For example I bought my son a "toy guitar" for christmas; it pretty much needs constant tuning. so I went through 7 or 8 different free guitar tuning apps before finding one I liked.
Erm, most of those cheap guitars come with electronic tuners. You must have really cheaped out to get a "toy" guitar without a tuner. Besides, a decent chromatic tuner is about $30 in Australia (so it's probably cheaper where you live). If you wasted more than 1 hour of your time on free apps, you lost money.
Beyond this, you wont find a decent tuner application on a phone because the microphone on a phone is made for the frequency range of the human voice which is 85Hz to 225Hz, a six string in normal tuning has a frequency between 82Hz (E2) and 1318Hz (E6). Even hitting an open top E (E4 = 329Hz) is beyond what the hardware is meant for. To properly tune a guitar you need test both the open and 12th fret, so on the top E string that's E4 at 330Hz and E5 at 659Hz.
So, $7 billion made from 40 billion downloads equals $1 for every 5.7 downloads. Ouch indeed.
If we divide that 7 Billion over the 5 Million registered developer accounts they have made in the entire time that the store has been running (5 years) they've made $1400 each. That's not even enough to pay for the 5x$99 fees and $1500 for the Mac needed to do development.
Even more pain, ever time you hear of an individual developer making 1 million dollars, that means over 700 developers lost money.
I would much rather arbitrarily use Mercuries melting and boiling point...Actually I'd like to use the point between it's freezing and when it turns to plasma. WTF is so non-arbitrary about water?
It's abundance. The fact water can be found everywhere and purified easily makes it a good point to start with.
Besides using an object as reference, be it water or mercury is the exact opposite of arbitrary.
arÂbiÂtrarÂy
1. Based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.
An arbitrary system has the boiling point at 21 and the freezing point at -453.
Slashdot Mirror
Not necessarily, There have been sieges in the US that have lasted months and no-one switched sides. They have been fighting civilians in Iraq for a decade and how many mass defections have we seen.
The military will side with the side that it feels is right, even if it is a tyrannical government (see the Chinese for a good example, few westerners would say what the Chinese are doing to Tibet or their own citizens is right but the army hasn't changed sides because _they_ believe they are right).
You ignore the fact this is happening in a foreign country where there is zero support from the locals. When you have defectors, collaborators and quislings aiding the military it becomes a lot less effective, in any civil war there is going to be "patriots" who will go to great lengths to support the government against the "insurgents". In Iraq and Afghanistan, none of the locals want to help the invaders.
You also ignore that even after a decade of resistance, they are yet to dislodge the invaders. The US going bankrupt isn't even managing to do a proper job of it.
Hmm, in the US revolution, the majority of the people who joined the militia were in the colonial military. The English did not maintain a large standing army in many of their colonies. India was protected primarily by Indians, America was protected primarily by Americans. The British invested most of the military power into their navy. So you're really adding to the GP's point here.
George Washington was a colonel in the colonial militia before the revolution. A trained and experienced soldier fighting the French and Indians (American natives) over 20 years before the revolution began.
Beyond this, the colonial militia in 1775 had muskets, horses and no armour. Hunters had muskets, horses and no armour. Cannon was the most dangerous weapon but they weren't as decisive as people think (easily flanked by cavalry or just keep the infantry walking forward. Cannons had a range of maybe 1 KM. Add to this that no-one maintained professional armies, they were raised as needed from peasants and conscripts, at best they maintained a militia.
In 2012, the army has tanks, jets, guided missiles, artillery, helicopters a working logistics and support chain as well as highly trained professional soldiers. Meanwhile the civilians have rednecks with rifles who've drunk too much Red Bull.
The civilians will find very few sources to replenish their arms and munitions. In the US revolution the French provided a lot of arms (cannon in particular) just to spite the British. The Syrian civilians are having a lot of trouble against the Assad government despite the fact that the Assad government is having as much trouble getting new weapons and munitions as the civilians.
block of text with no grammar for the win
I've got a PC (which, thanks to my job is kept pretty up to date with eng samples from intel, amd and nvidia) and I've got an XBox and PS3, i play games on all of them (probably the ps3 not as much mainly because i prefer the xbox controller) and I don't see any reason why I would abandon the consoles to play on the PC exclusively even though it is a pretty decent PC. They all have their place.
The problem you have is that you are not the average console player.
Consoles are primarily played by casual players. The Wii outsold the Xbox and Playstation 2:1 until they both dropped their prices to cater for the casual market. The average console player plays Mario Kart, Wii Sports, Rock Band and the like. The top selling game on the Xbox 360 is Kinect Adventures, Gran Turismo on the PS3 which is really an arcade game.Without the casual market, consoles cant compete against PC's which are more profitable per unit and a lot more powerful.
I've got a Wii, it's got it's place as a casual gaming device. Something I play with gamer and non-gamer friends alike. This is where consoles excel. I mean they do really well here. Simple, fun games.
The world isn't going to abandon consoles, but the PS3 and Xbox 360 were so unprofitable for so long that making another generation could easily sink Sony in it's current state, MS less so because they can afford subsidise their games and entertainment divisions. However Nintendo proved that causal was where the money was in consoles. Put simply, the console market is no longer supporting consoles like the Xbox 360 and Playstation (there's a long history of this in the console world, powerful consoles like the Turbo Grafx and 3DO were beaten by less powerful consoles because that was what the market wanted).
What I think is going to happen is that consoles and tablets will merge, they'll be tablets on the go but will have HDMI out and Bluetooth connectivity for controllers. Processing power is getting up there with Nvidia's Tegra 4. All that's needed is the back catalogue of games.
Battery life and cost. The damned thing is $999. I can buy quite a decent laptop for that, with similar or better specs, better battery life, and a lot more usability (since it's an actual laptop).
It's Razer, what do you expect. Razer charge A$70 for a DeathAdder mouse, I paid 300 Baht (less than A$10) for a near perfect copy (exact same internals, shape and weight, sans Razer branding).
When Android tablets came out, they cost as much as Ipads. As more competition got into the market and the unit cost lowered, prices decreased. You can still by a Galaxy Tab for A$6-700 but then again, I can get a Nexus 10 for A$400 (A$350 if I wanted to stuff about with imports).
It wont take long for tablet/console hybrids to drop in price. The biggest problem they have is the lack of a game back catalogue but with old games being resurrected on Android this wont be a problem for long.
Has anyone measured the standard ounce or hogs head lately?
BTW: we've spoken with the frenchies, they'll stop feeding the standard KG more than one bacon and cheese croissant per day.
No, you went one further and proved my point.
Consoles are about casual, accessable games, this is the core of the console market.
There are so many deficencies with console hardware it's not funny. This is why there still isn't a successful strategy game on consoles. To make truely in depth games (I refuse to call them "hardcore") you need a platform that is extensible, not a limited platform.
But that is how it IS. That is how it HAS ALWAYS BEEN.
You're not going to break that cycle just because you wish it.
BTW, the NeoGeo and Turbo Grafx were so good that the companies who made them no longer exist. Feel free to go on about how technically superior the 3DO was too. You're proving my point for me. Hard core consoles pretending to be PC's just dont work.
You picked a random example out of thin air that DID NOT MAKE ANY SENSE as it does not relate one iota to the console gaming industry.
Stop pretending to know about things you clearly have no idea about.
Consoles depend on the casual gamer, mobile and console gaming now occupy the same market. As a result of this, the console and mobile gaming market will merge. PC-Pretenders will dispensary (like the Turbo Grafx and 3DO, which were both quite powerful but ultimately failures) as consoles become tablets that can connect to a TV and bluetooth input device to become traditional consoles.
The "winner" of at least the last three console wars was the cheapest console.
The Wii outsold the Xbox 360 and the PS3. At some points it was outselling them *combined*, until Microsoft and Sony dropped their prices.
This is exactly what I mean. The console market relies on the casual gamer for profitability. Not that there's anything wrong with casual gaming.
Of the last console generation I owned a PS2 and a Xbox360, I owned one game on each before the PS2 became a glorified DVD player (which is sucked at) but the Xbox fared better, chipped and running XBMC it served as a media centre until 2010, nether were useful gaming machines as any games released on them that I wanted to play came out on the PC anyway. This generation I bought a Wii and used it for playing games.
The real winner of the console wars was IBM, who made the CPU for the Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360.
Ouya, Gamestick, Piston, Shield, and all the other microconsoles... I'm not worried that the graphics will hold them back (well, maybe Gamestick). The thing that's more likely to keep them from succeeding is a small game library.
The first company to get a good back-catalogue wins. Probably Nintendo, they've got a good history at acquiring back catalogues of other console manufacturers (Sega, Atari).
The microconsoles you mentioned are pretty much version 1.0. They wont sell in huge numbers but will pave the way for future versions.
Got to love how they mod it over-rated, it's basically an admission that I'm right and they dont want others to see it.
Consoles were also arcade-at-home devices. The funny controllers (joysticks, more than 2 buttons), and boxes with graphics that rivaled the arcade machines.
Exactly, the casual market grew out of the kinds of people who went to arcades. This is why old acrade games like Glaga, Tetris and Street Fighter remain console favourites.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
Seriously? Street Fighter?
None of these games have "depth?"
Credibility shot right there.
Street fighter is an arcade game, you might be too young to remember but street fighter debued in the arcade (the arcade is where you played casual games before the home console became popular, you're probably too young to remember this too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_Fighter First released in the arcade in 1987.
This is how it is in the console world. It was dog eat dog. Nintendo ate Atari and Sega, Sony tried to eat nintendo... The first company to release a decent tablet/console hybrid will eat the others (smart monies on Nintendo, they seem to understand the market).
The console market does not abide competition. Having three players is the largest it's ever been and right now, two of those three players will have trouble staying in the game.
As far as I know, neither Canon or Nikon have wiped each other off the map nor do they have plans to.
That's because you've got Pentax, Panasonic, Fijifilm, Olympus, Leica and many others competing in DLSR, Point and Shoot, Enthusiast and many other markets. Also Canon make more than just cameras. The only way this compares to consoles in when we ask "what happened to Kodak" and answer "they bet on film when the market went digital".
It's obvious you're young and haven't researched much about the console market, you might want to do that before making ill informed posts.
Seriously, do you think people WANT to phone quality graphics on a 60" TV? No, they don't even want to see it on a 15" laptop.
LoL, people like the Xbox 360 graphics, that's still standard def with no AA. The Wii is even weaker.
/. nerds are complaining about 1366 x 768 on their 15" laptops.
No-one except
Beyond this, my 18 month old Acer Iconia (Tegra2) could easily output at 1080p with more AA than an Xbox 360 (as a member of the glorious PC gaming master race, it was still pitiful, but then again so are consoles).
I'll hit you with the clue by four. The Wii is so popular because it's fun. The upcoming tablet-consoles will be the same. People will buy it because it's cheap and accessible. Even the Xbox 360 and PS3 need the casual audience to survive, 40% of their sales came after the price drop in their respective units. People want cheaper consoles for casual gaming, as for so called "hardcore" gaming, well that's already heading back to the PC.
The so called "hardcore" console is doomed. There may well be another Xbox or Playstation but that will definitely be the last one. It took Microsoft and Sony half a decade to get their consoles making money, they are yet to recoup their total investment. Mobile gaming is growing and profitable. With improvements in mobile hardware it wont be long before we'll have tablet/console hybrids where you plug it into the TV via HDMI and use a bluetooth controller to create an instant console out of a tablet. Nintendo is half way there by putting tablets into the Wii U (which will make money, but wont be as big of a success as the Wii).
Anyone who thinks that console and mobile gaming don't occupy the same market is delusional.
The writing is on the wall for "PC pretenders" like the Xbox and PS, "hardcore" games will go back to the PC whilst the casual console will merge into a tablet form factor. Things like the OUYA are more of a proof of concept, it'll sell but it wont be a smashing success but that's the deal with version 1.0 products. The successors to the OUYA will put the nails into the current and "next-gen" consoles.
The console-killer always has been the good old PC. A reasonably specced-out PC with a mid-range graphics card is far, far better than any console. But nobody listens to me.
Well yes and no.
You may not be old enough to remember but back before the Playstation and Xbox PC-pretenders turned up consoles were about casual, accessible games like Mario Kart. PC's were about in depth games, shooters like Doom and adventure games like Star Control 2. Then the PS/XB pretenders came a long and pretended they could be "hardcore" gaming machines. This was until Nintendo released the Wii and proved that consoles were about casual, accessible games like Mario Kart and made money hand over fist whilst it took the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 half a decade to achieve profitability (the PS3 still hasn't recouped it's investment yet).
Now mobile is muscling in on the casual game and this is where the "traditional" console is doomed. Casual audiences will be attracted to the cheapness, ease of use and multiplayer capabilities of the tablet-consoles (Tabsoles, Conslets?) and "hardcore" games will come home, back to the PC.
Whilst I agree with your other 3 points this one isn't that much of a factor. The tiny amount of aluminum doesn't make up that much weight and being metal, is quite maleable and more resistant to damage when dropped. Apple's problems are:
- Using glass where plastic or rubberised plastic is more suitable (such as the back of the phone).
- Extreme rigidity/lack of removable parts. When I drop my GNex, the battery cover comes off and takes with it some of the kinetic energy of the impact, the plastic casing also flexes.
- Glass again, this compared to plastic reduces grip and makes them more prone to dropping.
You're not looking very hard then.
Catching up with my sister at a coffee shop last week, hearing "you look very different from your profile picture" said quite a few times was hilarious.
I've always found online dating sites dodgy. The western oriented ones like OK Cupid end up pushing something. Some others like Date In Asia are often free advertisement for working ladies.
The market be damned. If I can tell at a glance whether a woman spells 'you' as a single vowel or not, society, traditional marriage, the divorce rate, whatever - it can all go to hell.
Unless you're in the market for a non-western woman, then the lack of English and Grammar skills can be considered a plus.
Can you release a moddable game through apple that has fake flags and names, and rely on modders to alter flags/names to whatever the user wants? Or does Apple have a lockdown on mods, too?
You mean a game engine where you can add your own assets like textures, skins and models... Given the fact Apple wont even let you have a file manager I doubt they'll let you have anything like this.
It turns you into a Spudnik.
Astronauts are being replaced by doughnauts.
No problems, I was just being a pendant.
Not really, They aren't charging a once off fee for a developer license. They are charging it yearly. Don't pay the fee and they take down your application.
Free application developers still need to pay for the yearly license fee and Mac to develop on.
And that statement is downright deceitful considering you need to pay the $99 yearly license fee to get you application listed. You still need to pay for the Mac to develop on regardless of if you release anything. A free developer registration only gives you the right to look, not to touch (as in release an application).
I haven't even consider the cost in man hours.
I've said it before, the only way to make money with mobile applications is to be the one the suckers who think they can make money on mobile applications hire to make their crappy apps... Given that work can be farmed off to the 3rd world Asian nation of your choice it's hardly a guaranteed success.
It's a long way from introducing a bill to getting it through Congress and signed by the President.
Yes, but beyond that it's only a short amount of time before Mr Burns steals it.
Just to be a pendant,
There is something compelling you to use Google Play, the services and advantages you listed in your post. What you mean is there is nothing forcing you to use Google Play.
This is a commission, standard procedure really. They're handling the store front, you're making the merchandise. It's worked well this way for centuries. This I have no issue with.
My problems with the Apple App store are:
1. They double dip. First you have to pay a yearly fee, then 30% of the income.
2. They total editorial control over what I can sell. If Google Play refuse to sell my application, I can go elsewhere (other app stores or sell it myself) with Apple, you're SOL and the reasons Apple reject your application seem whimsical and random.
Erm, most of those cheap guitars come with electronic tuners. You must have really cheaped out to get a "toy" guitar without a tuner. Besides, a decent chromatic tuner is about $30 in Australia (so it's probably cheaper where you live). If you wasted more than 1 hour of your time on free apps, you lost money.
Beyond this, you wont find a decent tuner application on a phone because the microphone on a phone is made for the frequency range of the human voice which is 85Hz to 225Hz, a six string in normal tuning has a frequency between 82Hz (E2) and 1318Hz (E6). Even hitting an open top E (E4 = 329Hz) is beyond what the hardware is meant for. To properly tune a guitar you need test both the open and 12th fret, so on the top E string that's E4 at 330Hz and E5 at 659Hz.
Mmmmm, indeed. $7 billion worth of hurt.... Ouch.
So, $7 billion made from 40 billion downloads equals $1 for every 5.7 downloads. Ouch indeed.
If we divide that 7 Billion over the 5 Million registered developer accounts they have made in the entire time that the store has been running (5 years) they've made $1400 each. That's not even enough to pay for the 5x$99 fees and $1500 for the Mac needed to do development.
Even more pain, ever time you hear of an individual developer making 1 million dollars, that means over 700 developers lost money.
Yeah, these editors, sheesh. You give them an inch, they take a mile.
Give them an inch, they take 25 millimetres.
I would much rather arbitrarily use Mercuries melting and boiling point...Actually I'd like to use the point between it's freezing and when it turns to plasma. WTF is so non-arbitrary about water?
It's abundance. The fact water can be found everywhere and purified easily makes it a good point to start with.
Besides using an object as reference, be it water or mercury is the exact opposite of arbitrary.
arÂbiÂtrarÂy
1. Based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.
An arbitrary system has the boiling point at 21 and the freezing point at -453.
Also, "Mercury's" not "Mercuries".