How you got modded to 5 is beyond me. I know, it's because you're repeating the same incorrect meme's that are posted in droves to slashdot.
Now, let's back up a second here. Let's make one thing clear. I don't give a crap about who wins or who sold more or who is in better shape. Unless they pay my bills or pay me a salary, then they don't matter. In essence, if I buy their stuff, they end up even *costing* me money.
The Wii U will be as relevant as the Wii, which was as Relevant as the Game Cube, and the N64 before it. It won't be as relevant as the SNES and NES. Nintendo has been playing this game for a while now and every time people like you come out and claim they are dead and no longer relevant
Now, on to the show. You're so full of BS it isn't funny. Let's now debunk your again tired repeated meme armchair financial analysis. The Wii has been dead for 2 years now. Analysts and various articles have checked out the financials. Even Nintendo has admitted as such. According to them IIRC sales are down like over 73% (not exact, but ballpark).
The 360 and PS3 haven't sold as many units and Nintendo was able to make actual profit off of their system right at launch.
It's questionable if MS and Sony have really come out ahead of this or not given the systems cost. The only real reason why MS and Sony aren't releasing a new system this year is that they still haven't made up for all the losses they incurred from the last round.
Who cares? Did you miss the part where the xbox and ps3 are still selling strong and are maybe what like 10 million behind. And nevermind the fact that the attach rate is non-existent on the Wii where the ecosystem in which MS/Sony earn $7 per machine is much higher. And I don't know when they broke even, but I'm 110% positive your comment is bull that they haven't made up their losses incurred. They wouldn't be pricing even the *first* refresh at that point if it didn't make money at that point, nevertheless now lowering that price. For an armchair business person, you are surely lacking the basic fundamentals.
If Nintendo ever fixes its issue with 3rd party developers then Sony and MS will have to worry since that is the only thing making their system relevant enough to stay in the market. Their 1st party development is lack luster and Nintendo can practically print money without the aid of 3rd parties.
Nintendo will NEVER fix their issue with 3rd party. It's in their culture. And any developer worth their salt after hearing all the stupid whizbang screens and gyroscopes added knows what they learned from the wii. That the platform isn't worth it unless you're making "Babyz 4!" And Nintendo can't print money, as evidenced by the 3DS completely tanking and only now somewhat recovering by lowering the price a whopping $80.
They have only had ONE year with an operational loss. Look at what's happened in Japan in the last year tsunami/nuclear disaster, Every major industry in Japan has been in the red.
Can't blame that on Japan. Sales were down like 73%. You don't think that has ANY part in the fact that they lost $950 MILLION
It was more the point of the poster repeating the same old meme of "graphics aren't important! games must be fun!" and they use this same line over and over to justify purchasing something with shitty graphics. Nevermind the fact that games can have great graphics AND fun.
Tho as a side note, you have to agree that, as I'm sure u know already, once you play a game at max settings at native 1080p resolution (or higher), it's *really* tough to go back, regardless of the game.
Perfect example is even let's compare it to Mario directly: play trine 2 on the pc at max settings and 1080p, and then go to the ps3. It hurts. Or even psychonauts, a cartoony game, that while is ancient, looks so much better because at 1080p resolution it's crisp and clear.
You know what is scary? I think competition for that 6 year old is the iPad. You're right, you'd think a family wouldn't want social for their kids. But I can't tell you how many little kids have their parents buy them iPads. It's scary. And not even the cheapest one. We're talking they have to have the 64 GB 3G one that's like what, $1000?
Now, I think it's more being a bad parent or a case of being lazy and just caving to a whiny kid, but that's another story.
Hah I remember the ol' NES gamepad. You're right, I forgot how uncomfortable it was. And even to press the buttons it took effort and it made a creaking sound. But I remember it fondly. But I sure as hell wouldn't wanna use one now!;-)
I think the epitome of a great non-analog controller was the SNES controller. Oh my god if I could use that in Super Street Fighter IV Arcade today, I'd wreck. As of now I'm freakin terrible.
Yes they make sequels. But none have even come CLOSE, even CoD, to milking it more than Nintendo. Even your FF example: they've had like 12-15 in the span of 20 years. That's 1-2 years in Nintendo time.
Make no mistake. Your examples aren't even in the same league.
Yes, it's 2012. You could make that argument in 2005 when it was released. Watching the Wii on a HDTV now is *just painful.* And millions of people who play online via PSN or Live are just worthless because "real men play single player." You do know there are normal people who do like to play online you know.
As for the fun. I'm tired of/. writing that crap. There are tons of fun games on the other consoles as well. Shadow complex for 360. Fun as hell, just like Metroid was. Dead Space: the fun is in how scary it is. Getting caught up in a gripping story of Alone in the Dark is fun. Working as a team and successfully flanking and overtaking an objective in BF3 is fun. Geometry wars IIRC is on both 360 and PS3 too you know. Trials HD? More fun than excitebike for the NES! You can't tell me L4D killing zombies isn't fun. Tomb Raider Guardian of Light or whatever it's called. 2.5D hanging on by a thread aerial platforming at it's best. Emulating games? I played NES games on a NES. Not saying they're not fun and if someone hasn't played them yet, they shouldn't. But c'mon, we've all played them already.
So no, I want games to be fun AND look good. Good graphics IS a requirement for a console. Otherwise, it has little value added over an iPhone someone already has and is satisfied with playing "Punch the Monkey" TM
I'm gonna start this thread with some good 'ol flamebaiting. Well kinda.
I think Nintendo lost their relevance. They owned casual with the Wii. They failed to realize casual gamers are just that: casual. They have no allegiance. Words with friends on their iPhone is good enough now. Or Cut the Rope. They don't feel the need to buy a second box when their smartphone is good enough and games cost $1 or free.
People have moved on. Adding more gyroscopes or screens wont' help.
But that's an observation. But I have my bias. I moved on from Nintendo after I played Mario Kart 96 and Zelda 47.
I also forgot to mention we may HAVE to do both. I have a feeling that MMO's and F2P still won't be pushed on the consoles. They can't charge subs anymore for subs, so that's out. And F2P will "devalue" the console. Console players are trained to pay $60 for that shiny game at gamestop. Why pay anything anymore if you can just fire up a F2P on your console?
Problem is, we all tend to forget that consoles are huge in the US, UK, and Japan. Anywhere else and no one even uses or cares about consoles. It's all PC gaming. IIRC it's MMO's and interestingly at gaming cafe's. But we tend to think of consoles as gospel when in the grand scheme of things they're not as important as we think. Hell even in Japan it's declining because of the rise of smartphone mobile MMO's and games.
So console guys are damned if they do, damned if they don't. Quite frankly, I'm not gonna say consoles are dying, because they will always need a "black box" to play games, and there will always be AAA games which in the future will be so costly to develop it will only be feasible for a standard box (with a port to PC later in mind). But it's the first time I'd say that the whole meme of "PC gaming is dying" should be reversed.
Oh I agree with you on the legacy part. I'm not buying any more games for the consoles right now, because we all can't trust MS for effectively bricking out machines by not supplying updates for games one the new console comes out. I feel bad for the people who keep on buying stuff. Didn't MS completely drop the original xbox the day the 360 was released? And nowadays (and I laugh now that I think of it) console owners feel the PC user's plight. Most games are borderline bricks or unplayable upon release and need day 1 patches for consoles! So in essence once the new consoles hit we have bricks.
You are right. But I guess I'm making the engineer's classic dilemma: everything has a cost. I will never deal with hunting down for patches again. The cost is I have to finish playing my game before it's obsolesced.
actually yes I played crysis 1, it was just every other shooter on the market at the time, and fuck you if you dared stick your head out of a bush for a half ms cause a sniper 6 miles away would headshot you every single time, wonky vheical physics, dumb as shit AI... aside from looking pretty and having a hype machine set into overdrive it really was a just below average shooter for the time
Name one shooter it was exactly like at the time. Thought so.
What are you talking about with snipers? How did you manage this? If that was the case, then even on the first level you'd see that if you were out by the first hut with the generator, the guys across the lagoon could see you. But they didn't fire. So more BS.
Dumb as shit AI? Did you miss the part even on the 2nd level where the if you were discovered below in the stream the guys below would chase you and the guys above the cliff would flank and suppress you into the others? That you call dumb? Dude, CoD and the like don't break on-rails enough for enemies to move from left to right. They never leave your screen. So they go from one left side of the screen to the other. Yea Crysis occasionally did stupid stuff. But that's only because it*actually did stuff.* I thought 2 had even better AI. Those guys flanked, suppressed, squeezed you into positions, surrounded you.
I honestly think you are spraying total 100% BS out of your mouth. I don't think you played it. You're really just repeating meme's that everyone else has done.
Oh I'm talking about in personal lives. Not the workplace. Never had a problem at work. And besides, everyone uses email and replies are quick. I call people because I just like to talk to people. Makes the day more enjoyable.
Oh I do. And I constantly go back and forth on both. Like last night I fired up a game of BF:BC2 on the PC and played max settings. I was curious to see how it looked, compared to the 360 copy I have and now I'm playing BF3 for PS3. It's funny, but after about 10 minutes of intense multiplayer, you forget about the graphics and I really didn't notice much difference. Yes there is a huge difference, but the consoles get the "feel" of good enough. But it was just interesting to watch.
But you're right, you can and should do both. Though I'm leaning towards console only and not building a new rig. I used the m+kb, and want to use the controller. Unfortunately, while most games let you use the 360 controller for PC, little niggling things don't always work, or you have to manually map the keys, or in FPS in single player (wouldn't dare take on a person with a pc mouse) there is no aim assist/snap which while I have no problem with, lately I'm appreciating it.
Very true. But what will really happen is pretty much all devs and games will go to the PC. They can just make so much more money and have more access to more gamers, and with more freedom. Prediction: F2P, indie, and mid-size will rule the PC and the majority of the gaming world. AAA will be marginalized. But AAA games will remain on the consoles and possible even eliminated on the PC in the future. The costs and art assets involved are going to be even more ridiculous than they are now. If anything, we'll probably only see PC ports starting 3 years in when they have time to program the games to be cross-platform again.
I take issue with that. Did you even play Crysis 1? Most people who've said that here on/. are just repeating that meme and haven't played it.
- The freedom to choose multiple routes on entire freaking huge areas instead of on-rails.
- Freedom unlike pretty much every shooter out now to kill in different ways. Want to be stealthy? Go cloak, sneak up behind a guy, turn on maximum strength, drag him to a cliff and throw him off. Or be entirely a different way: hop on top of a hut, turn on maximum strength, pound the roof, and watch it crumble and kill the soldiers below. No, your version of a great game is completely on-rails, endless waves of respawning enemies, a game that pushes u to the next section if u stick around too long, quicktime events, and stiff-looking unemotional "set pieces." Yawn.
- Graphics that 6 years later still shit on CoD or most games. The only ones better? BF3, and... Crysis *2*!
- A game that was such a terrible tech demo that it managed to sell *4* million copies. On just the PC! Diablo 3 didn't even sell that yet.
Don't forget that console games have tons of bugs now too. And big huge flaws. The Skyrim save game issue? Bioshock always messing up widescreen? Rockstar grand theft everything. Silent Hill Downpour--the entire freaking game is full of bugs and hard locks.
Anyway, I go back and forth on this. I don't know which solution is better. I think it's gotta be down to simply personal preference. I think both sides has it's flaws.
PC flaws:
- I swear to god I'm so sick of updating drivers, for anything. Graphics drivers should just be auto-updated, period. Not even to have a button in the ATI/Nvidia control panel is good enough. As it stands now, there are too many steps. Yea yea it's more safe to do it this way now, where if a driver is broke they can revoke it. But it's the same issue windows was having. Either deal with that, or deal with most users not upgrading at all.
- All games should have built in patching mechanisms. Steam does this right now, as do EA games or GFWL. But what if a game isn't? Or what if I want to buy a game from say GOG or Gamersgate. They don't auto patch. So ur stuck back in the days of yore, hunting down patches from fileplanet or something. That's bull and I flat out refuse.
-Small dev Q&A problems. I love freakin Red Orchestra 2 and Arma 2. Amazing games. But the bugs. Oh the bugs. Jesus it's terrible. Don't even bother playing a game until it's been out 6 months.
Console flaws:
- No support of alternative games. Read: MMO or F2P. Short of DC universe for PS3 or free realms, it's out. But that's a big segment of the future and part of the solution to keeping online communities big and a steady, not one-off, revenue stream. And consoles could OWN this market, but they don't. They could make a badass-looking (compared to the PC F2P's right now which have to be simple enough to run on IGP's) MMO's or F2P's. But nooo.
- No digital downloads for everything. There are a few games I want. Can't get em. Both ps3 and xbox only have like 20% of their titles available. Even on the ps3, you can't download most sony games. Pathetic (resistance 3 I'm looking at u). And the prices are atrocious. $60 or $40 for games that are only $30 or $15-20 online retail. And more money for a game without shipping or physical presence AND is locked to an account? Who in their right mind would buy it?
- No mouse/keyboard support. I'm not saying they should do it across the board like most people who throw out this argument do. No, consoles are meant to be played with a controller. HOWEVER, make keyboard support only for some genres, like strategy. There are barely any RTS games. This would allow them access to the market.
- Not a problem yet: will the next gen of consoles display in true 1080p? Don't forget they have to support people who still have 720p TV's. And don't forget a lot of people have an older tv with an older hdmi port. They can't do 1080p at 30 fps. So you may have a case of spending all that money again to buy a new tv, so the case of more money on PC's is moot. And they may STILL not be in 1080p so games will look like true ass
Hah, I was waiting for it. Waiting for the first post to bring up your argument. I've been reading slashdot for way too long.
Don't forget that console games have tons of bugs now too. And big huge flaws. The Skyrim save game issue? Bioshock always messing up widescreen? Rockstar grand theft everything. Silent Hill Downpour--the entire freaking game is full of bugs and hard locks.
Anyway, I go back and forth on this. I don't know which solution is better. I think it's gotta be down to simply personal preference. I think both sides has it's flaws.
PC flaws:
- I swear to god I'm so sick of updating drivers, for anything. Graphics drivers should just be auto-updated, period. Not even to have a button in the ATI/Nvidia control panel is good enough. As it stands now, there are too many steps. Yea yea it's more safe to do it this way now, where if a driver is broke they can revoke it. But it's the same issue windows was having. Either deal with that, or deal with most users not upgrading at all.
- All games should have built in patching mechanisms. Steam does this right now, as do EA games or GFWL. But what if a game isn't? Or what if I want to buy a game from say GOG or Gamersgate. They don't auto patch. So ur stuck back in the days of yore, hunting down patches from fileplanet or something. That's bull and I flat out refuse.
-Small dev Q&A problems. I love freakin Red Orchestra 2 and Arma 2. Amazing games. But the bugs. Oh the bugs. Jesus it's terrible. Don't even bother playing a game until it's been out 6 months.
Console flaws:
- No support of alternative games. Read: MMO or F2P. Short of DC universe for PS3 or free realms, it's out. But that's a big segment of the future and part of the solution to keeping online communities big and a steady, not one-off, revenue stream. And consoles could OWN this market, but they don't. They could make a badass-looking (compared to the PC F2P's right now which have to be simple enough to run on IGP's) MMO's or F2P's. But nooo.
- No digital downloads for everything. There are a few games I want. Can't get em. Both ps3 and xbox only have like 20% of their titles available. Even on the ps3, you can't download most sony games. Pathetic (resistance 3 I'm looking at u). And the prices are atrocious. $60 or $40 for games that are only $30 or $15-20 online retail. And more money for a game without shipping or physical presence AND is locked to an account? Who in their right mind would buy it?
- No mouse/keyboard support. I'm not saying they should do it across the board like most people who throw out this argument do. No, consoles are meant to be played with a controller. HOWEVER, make keyboard support only for some genres, like strategy. There are barely any RTS games. This would allow them access to the market.
Spoken like a true fanboy. "If apple chooses not to do so or isn't good at it, it's not neccesary." Did you hear yourself?
He didn't say that at all. Apple doesn't care about enterprise customers because that's not their market. They also aren't making point-of-sale terminals. So what? There's lots of evidence that their interest in the professional market is fading. These days Apple is mostly about consumers.
My original point WAS talking about the enterprise and RIM was/is succeeding there. And he wrote back, in essence, that "so what?--because Apple doesn't care about enterprise." So yes, as someone with a UID as low as yours is knows, that is the EXACT phrase every Apple fanboy has used since the dawn of Apple.
Since Apple isn't adapting to the enterprise, lots of enterprises are adapting to Apple. Companies are figuring out ways of supporting iPhones or are simply letting employees bring their own device.
Brilliant move. Read your sentence again as well. Companies are knowingly planning and implenting significant resources into not only the ONE product of *one* company, but a company who's very DNA and entire lifetime history is one of absolute *shitting* on its enterprise customers. EOL'ing everything. EOL all enterprise and server products. For goodness sake they're even practically abandoning their consumer *laptop* market. The newest OSX has had MAJOR issues in the software unfixed (battery fixes, etc.) since when now? And lastly, don't forget that most companies that say they support it, they mean maybe support for email and that's about it.
If this was any other product or any other company, IT managers wouldn't DARE, in a million years, support a move like that.
And have you ever used an iDevice?
Have you? If all of your apps are crashing all of the time, then I think you have a hardware problem. Your experience isn't typical.
Yup. 3GS. And it is. Even that article 6 months ago validates it ("iOS apps crash more than Android" article or something of that sort). Not my device either. Buddy has a 4, another has a 4, another has a 3GS. Most app devs can't even be bothered to implement SSL with their highly sensative customer data (Southwest, and that article a while back--what is it, like 40% IIRC?)--you think they give a damn about program stability or QA?
If you're doing professional music editing on a smartphone on the road, please. You're not a music professional then.
By professional, do you mean commercial? For most people, making music is a creative or artistic endeavor and has nothing to do with being professional.
You're validating my point again. I said playing piano was nothing more than a dick-waving thing to do on your phone. And you just said it wasn't for important use, but for screwing around with. Different how?
Addressed this in another post. Simply needed a change. Was using the BB OS for a while now. Just wanted something fresh. I love technology and tinkering. Wanted something new to tinker with. And a FYI, my next phone is going to be a BB. Love Android, just miss how efficient and lightning fast the BB lets you be at phone email and text tasks.
This wasn't meant to be a flamewar about apple. It was about RIM. But if you want to start it, that's fine by me.
The problem with that theory is that a LOT of very technical people were the ones that adopted Apple laptops early and propelled them to success.
No. Just no. This is why people adopted Apple laptops in the beginning:
- People wanted shiny. They were bored with the XP workhorse and wanted something different - It was the beginning of the online malware epidemic (not the simple viruses of yore) and Apple touted not getting them to suckers (which as we all know was, as especially now, is false) - Apple users who were on OS 9 and while being spoonfed shit ('96-7 on) for so many years finally had an upgrade path. - The apple cultists and fanboys, who had to rabidly defend their platform of choice here on 'ol/.
Let's not forget that the early OSX days were painful. And it didn't even have iTunes or any of this modern feature-added stuff it has today. It has GPU accelerated shiny graphics and that's IT. It was a stability and buggy nightmare until 10.3/10.4. So please, short of "ooh shiny", that was the main reason to upgrade, which is my original point.
Similarity for the iPhone a lot of the early users I knew were very technical people who could understand the benefits offered.
Anecdotal evidence does not an argument make. Most of the people I knew who were early purchasers were total douches who were fake hipsters and had to go around the party and show everyone their new Apple phone and, no kidding, actually had one guy without prompt from me say "and it doesn't have 3G, but Apple is so about the usability it doesn't matter". I kid you not. And technical benefits? Like when it was released in what, 2007, it didn't have 3G which was in use for years by then and don't forget by blackberry, but didn't have an App store either? Yes, so technically superior.
You don't seem very technically inclined yourself or you would have observed the percentage of MacBooks at technical conferences/gatherings...
Again, my point elsewhere in this thread about apple being a marketing and image company. They all use their workhouse windows 7 laptop at work, but when they attend their conference, they want to be seen using that apple logo. And your UID is low enough to know I'm right.
I have a blackberry bold, from work. New 7.1 OS. Touchscreen, aluminum design obviously takes from iPhone. yay.
Which one? Because that new bold 9900 or the Torch looks absolutely *nothing* like the iPhone *at all.*
But it sucks. Partly it's a chimera, gestures on the touchscreen battle with gestures from the keypad. The phone is awkwardly sized, trying to get a landscape wide screen with a need for a keypad.
Uh, unless you're going to type something out, your hands stay entirely on the touchpad. If I'm not typing an email, my hands won't ever leave the touchscreen if I don't want to. And if you want, it doesn't even have to leave the keyboard--use the trackpad. And there is even a software keyboard if you don't want to leave the touchpad IIRC. You get the choice and I'm not seeing how your workflow is affected.
The OS is better, but still lacks basic things. They've tried hard to embed Twitter in the OS for example, but the browser is horrible. Being horrible is in fact an improvement - the old browser made me want to stick a fork in my eye.
Point taken. But Android's stock browser is pretty bad too, and while mobile Safari is the best, it's the best of the worst. It doesn't even have a "view as desktop" if u ever need to actually use the full featured web page. And if you hate the stock BB browser, nothing is stopping you from getting Opera Mobile. Do you see people throwing a fit on iOS for using Dolphin or Skyfire?
So, built in apps: It has a killer app (BBM) that is hard to use. Its usefulness depends on network effects, and as people move away from Blackberry, BBM becomes less useful. iMessage is shows you how this should have worked from the beginning, and as iMessage gets broader adoption (any iOS 5 device, and soon OSX 10.8 will do iMessage), BBM will become even less essential, and Blackberrys also.
BB does have access to most if not all of the mainstream Apps as well you know. And with BBM, I could make the same argument. All my friends don't use iDevices. So iMessage is worthless to me. See how that works?
A Bold is too expensive and bulky to be a simple phone, and very bad at being a smartphone. Even charging is a pain now - my Bold takes more current than other BBs so a subset of my chargers don't work any more. Though iPads warn you of this, they still charge (slowly), With RIM, you're SOL. This is why they're sitting on inventory.
Too bulky? The reverse is true. Try holding that new bold 9900. It's actually the *perfect* width for typing and use. And as for charging, you're telling me BB doesn't have a micro/mini-whatever USB port for charging? Or that it won't let you charge? Not buying it.
Apple of course doesn't care about enterprise, but it doesn't seem to make business sense for them to care. If it would make business sense, I'm sure as heck they'd care. I personally think it's quite cool that you can do quite serious music playing and editing on iDevices. It's cool that these days you can have a general purpose computer in your phone, with an interaction surface sensitive enough to simulate a dynamic instrument keyboard or a tracker/sequencer button array.
Spoken like a true fanboy. "If apple chooses not to do so or isn't good at it, it's not neccesary." Did you hear yourself? That said, I really don't think you're a fanboy, but see my point? And have you ever used an iDevice? 98% of the apps crash all the time, are buggy, and have 20% of the features of their *web brethren* which are only like 30-50% of desktop brethren. What's the point of having an App if for most of what you do you have to go home to use your desktop to get something done? And you're example, cmon. If you're doing professional music editing on a smartphone on the road, please. You're not a music professional then. You're just exactly the silly type of person I described in my OP.
I'm sure that about 30% of slashdot users would disagree with you, considering that I bet you most of them run or are at the top of managing their enterprise or IT dept. But go on thinking that.
And yes, it's innovate to give someone an iPhone with unsecured business email to a fortune 500 company with trade secrets! And it's so NOT innovate for RIM to implement quite possibly the most innovative kernel ever produced, QNX, to run it's OS in the next phone.
You do realize that the information about write downs, poor sales, and declining financials is coming from Rim, don't you?
You do realize how journalism and PR works, especially in the tech industry, don't you? Businesses and companies write their own stuff or propose angles to "journalists" and then those so called journalists put them on their "news" website. If you look at there 10-K's and Q's--they are posted publicy. But who do you think is posting them--are you reading them from RIM's financial statement on blackberry.com or whatever? No, you're not. And let's not forget the majority of the articles are opinion pieces talking about "what rim needs to do" or "rim is dying blah blah blah". Sounds an awful like the situation with the incessant "Linux is dying" articles by our fav friend dvorak.
That's a sweet deal. I come from the financial sector. There, you NEED a BB. You don't even get a choice, and for good reason. One breach and it's millions/billions. I see your point though.
Though if I were a CTO I wouldn't allow anything other than BB's and definitely no BYOD's. And I'd only let people remotely in via VPN's and passcode generator devices. But that's me. Trade secrets are too important.
I smell the fanboys getting rabid. Only a fanboy would down mod this sensible post.
Slashdot Mirror
How you got modded to 5 is beyond me. I know, it's because you're repeating the same incorrect meme's that are posted in droves to slashdot.
Now, let's back up a second here. Let's make one thing clear. I don't give a crap about who wins or who sold more or who is in better shape. Unless they pay my bills or pay me a salary, then they don't matter. In essence, if I buy their stuff, they end up even *costing* me money.
The Wii U will be as relevant as the Wii, which was as Relevant as the Game Cube, and the N64 before it. It won't be as relevant as the SNES and NES. Nintendo has been playing this game for a while now and every time people like you come out and claim they are dead and no longer relevant
Now, on to the show. You're so full of BS it isn't funny. Let's now debunk your again tired repeated meme armchair financial analysis. The Wii has been dead for 2 years now. Analysts and various articles have checked out the financials. Even Nintendo has admitted as such. According to them IIRC sales are down like over 73% (not exact, but ballpark).
The 360 and PS3 haven't sold as many units and Nintendo was able to make actual profit off of their system right at launch.
It's questionable if MS and Sony have really come out ahead of this or not given the systems cost. The only real reason why MS and Sony aren't releasing a new system this year is that they still haven't made up for all the losses they incurred from the last round.
Who cares? Did you miss the part where the xbox and ps3 are still selling strong and are maybe what like 10 million behind. And nevermind the fact that the attach rate is non-existent on the Wii where the ecosystem in which MS/Sony earn $7 per machine is much higher. And I don't know when they broke even, but I'm 110% positive your comment is bull that they haven't made up their losses incurred. They wouldn't be pricing even the *first* refresh at that point if it didn't make money at that point, nevertheless now lowering that price. For an armchair business person, you are surely lacking the basic fundamentals.
If Nintendo ever fixes its issue with 3rd party developers then Sony and MS will have to worry since that is the only thing making their system relevant enough to stay in the market. Their 1st party development is lack luster and Nintendo can practically print money without the aid of 3rd parties.
Nintendo will NEVER fix their issue with 3rd party. It's in their culture. And any developer worth their salt after hearing all the stupid whizbang screens and gyroscopes added knows what they learned from the wii. That the platform isn't worth it unless you're making "Babyz 4!" And Nintendo can't print money, as evidenced by the 3DS completely tanking and only now somewhat recovering by lowering the price a whopping $80.
They have only had ONE year with an operational loss. Look at what's happened in Japan in the last year tsunami/nuclear disaster, Every major industry in Japan has been in the red.
Can't blame that on Japan. Sales were down like 73%. You don't think that has ANY part in the fact that they lost $950 MILLION
It was more the point of the poster repeating the same old meme of "graphics aren't important! games must be fun!" and they use this same line over and over to justify purchasing something with shitty graphics. Nevermind the fact that games can have great graphics AND fun.
Didn't know that. Learn something new every day.
Tho as a side note, you have to agree that, as I'm sure u know already, once you play a game at max settings at native 1080p resolution (or higher), it's *really* tough to go back, regardless of the game.
Perfect example is even let's compare it to Mario directly: play trine 2 on the pc at max settings and 1080p, and then go to the ps3. It hurts. Or even psychonauts, a cartoony game, that while is ancient, looks so much better because at 1080p resolution it's crisp and clear.
You know what is scary? I think competition for that 6 year old is the iPad. You're right, you'd think a family wouldn't want social for their kids. But I can't tell you how many little kids have their parents buy them iPads. It's scary. And not even the cheapest one. We're talking they have to have the 64 GB 3G one that's like what, $1000?
Now, I think it's more being a bad parent or a case of being lazy and just caving to a whiny kid, but that's another story.
Hah I remember the ol' NES gamepad. You're right, I forgot how uncomfortable it was. And even to press the buttons it took effort and it made a creaking sound. But I remember it fondly. But I sure as hell wouldn't wanna use one now! ;-)
I think the epitome of a great non-analog controller was the SNES controller. Oh my god if I could use that in Super Street Fighter IV Arcade today, I'd wreck. As of now I'm freakin terrible.
Yes they make sequels. But none have even come CLOSE, even CoD, to milking it more than Nintendo. Even your FF example: they've had like 12-15 in the span of 20 years. That's 1-2 years in Nintendo time.
Make no mistake. Your examples aren't even in the same league.
Yes, it's 2012. You could make that argument in 2005 when it was released. Watching the Wii on a HDTV now is *just painful.* And millions of people who play online via PSN or Live are just worthless because "real men play single player." You do know there are normal people who do like to play online you know.
As for the fun. I'm tired of /. writing that crap. There are tons of fun games on the other consoles as well. Shadow complex for 360. Fun as hell, just like Metroid was. Dead Space: the fun is in how scary it is. Getting caught up in a gripping story of Alone in the Dark is fun. Working as a team and successfully flanking and overtaking an objective in BF3 is fun. Geometry wars IIRC is on both 360 and PS3 too you know. Trials HD? More fun than excitebike for the NES! You can't tell me L4D killing zombies isn't fun. Tomb Raider Guardian of Light or whatever it's called. 2.5D hanging on by a thread aerial platforming at it's best. Emulating games? I played NES games on a NES. Not saying they're not fun and if someone hasn't played them yet, they shouldn't. But c'mon, we've all played them already.
So no, I want games to be fun AND look good. Good graphics IS a requirement for a console. Otherwise, it has little value added over an iPhone someone already has and is satisfied with playing "Punch the Monkey" TM
I'm gonna start this thread with some good 'ol flamebaiting. Well kinda.
I think Nintendo lost their relevance. They owned casual with the Wii. They failed to realize casual gamers are just that: casual. They have no allegiance. Words with friends on their iPhone is good enough now. Or Cut the Rope. They don't feel the need to buy a second box when their smartphone is good enough and games cost $1 or free.
People have moved on. Adding more gyroscopes or screens wont' help.
But that's an observation. But I have my bias. I moved on from Nintendo after I played Mario Kart 96 and Zelda 47.
I also forgot to mention we may HAVE to do both. I have a feeling that MMO's and F2P still won't be pushed on the consoles. They can't charge subs anymore for subs, so that's out. And F2P will "devalue" the console. Console players are trained to pay $60 for that shiny game at gamestop. Why pay anything anymore if you can just fire up a F2P on your console?
Problem is, we all tend to forget that consoles are huge in the US, UK, and Japan. Anywhere else and no one even uses or cares about consoles. It's all PC gaming. IIRC it's MMO's and interestingly at gaming cafe's. But we tend to think of consoles as gospel when in the grand scheme of things they're not as important as we think. Hell even in Japan it's declining because of the rise of smartphone mobile MMO's and games.
So console guys are damned if they do, damned if they don't. Quite frankly, I'm not gonna say consoles are dying, because they will always need a "black box" to play games, and there will always be AAA games which in the future will be so costly to develop it will only be feasible for a standard box (with a port to PC later in mind). But it's the first time I'd say that the whole meme of "PC gaming is dying" should be reversed.
Oh I agree with you on the legacy part. I'm not buying any more games for the consoles right now, because we all can't trust MS for effectively bricking out machines by not supplying updates for games one the new console comes out. I feel bad for the people who keep on buying stuff. Didn't MS completely drop the original xbox the day the 360 was released? And nowadays (and I laugh now that I think of it) console owners feel the PC user's plight. Most games are borderline bricks or unplayable upon release and need day 1 patches for consoles! So in essence once the new consoles hit we have bricks.
You are right. But I guess I'm making the engineer's classic dilemma: everything has a cost. I will never deal with hunting down for patches again. The cost is I have to finish playing my game before it's obsolesced.
actually yes I played crysis 1, it was just every other shooter on the market at the time, and fuck you if you dared stick your head out of a bush for a half ms cause a sniper 6 miles away would headshot you every single time, wonky vheical physics, dumb as shit AI ... aside from looking pretty and having a hype machine set into overdrive it really was a just below average shooter for the time
Name one shooter it was exactly like at the time. Thought so.
What are you talking about with snipers? How did you manage this? If that was the case, then even on the first level you'd see that if you were out by the first hut with the generator, the guys across the lagoon could see you. But they didn't fire. So more BS.
Dumb as shit AI? Did you miss the part even on the 2nd level where the if you were discovered below in the stream the guys below would chase you and the guys above the cliff would flank and suppress you into the others? That you call dumb? Dude, CoD and the like don't break on-rails enough for enemies to move from left to right. They never leave your screen. So they go from one left side of the screen to the other. Yea Crysis occasionally did stupid stuff. But that's only because it*actually did stuff.* I thought 2 had even better AI. Those guys flanked, suppressed, squeezed you into positions, surrounded you.
I honestly think you are spraying total 100% BS out of your mouth. I don't think you played it. You're really just repeating meme's that everyone else has done.
Oh I'm talking about in personal lives. Not the workplace. Never had a problem at work. And besides, everyone uses email and replies are quick. I call people because I just like to talk to people. Makes the day more enjoyable.
Oh I do. And I constantly go back and forth on both. Like last night I fired up a game of BF:BC2 on the PC and played max settings. I was curious to see how it looked, compared to the 360 copy I have and now I'm playing BF3 for PS3. It's funny, but after about 10 minutes of intense multiplayer, you forget about the graphics and I really didn't notice much difference. Yes there is a huge difference, but the consoles get the "feel" of good enough. But it was just interesting to watch.
But you're right, you can and should do both. Though I'm leaning towards console only and not building a new rig. I used the m+kb, and want to use the controller. Unfortunately, while most games let you use the 360 controller for PC, little niggling things don't always work, or you have to manually map the keys, or in FPS in single player (wouldn't dare take on a person with a pc mouse) there is no aim assist/snap which while I have no problem with, lately I'm appreciating it.
Very true. But what will really happen is pretty much all devs and games will go to the PC. They can just make so much more money and have more access to more gamers, and with more freedom. Prediction: F2P, indie, and mid-size will rule the PC and the majority of the gaming world. AAA will be marginalized. But AAA games will remain on the consoles and possible even eliminated on the PC in the future. The costs and art assets involved are going to be even more ridiculous than they are now. If anything, we'll probably only see PC ports starting 3 years in when they have time to program the games to be cross-platform again.
I take issue with that. Did you even play Crysis 1? Most people who've said that here on /. are just repeating that meme and haven't played it.
- The freedom to choose multiple routes on entire freaking huge areas instead of on-rails.
- Freedom unlike pretty much every shooter out now to kill in different ways. Want to be stealthy? Go cloak, sneak up behind a guy, turn on maximum strength, drag him to a cliff and throw him off. Or be entirely a different way: hop on top of a hut, turn on maximum strength, pound the roof, and watch it crumble and kill the soldiers below. No, your version of a great game is completely on-rails, endless waves of respawning enemies, a game that pushes u to the next section if u stick around too long, quicktime events, and stiff-looking unemotional "set pieces." Yawn.
- Graphics that 6 years later still shit on CoD or most games. The only ones better? BF3, and... Crysis *2*!
- A game that was such a terrible tech demo that it managed to sell *4* million copies. On just the PC! Diablo 3 didn't even sell that yet.
Wrote this as a reply in another post here:
Don't forget that console games have tons of bugs now too. And big huge flaws. The Skyrim save game issue? Bioshock always messing up widescreen? Rockstar grand theft everything. Silent Hill Downpour--the entire freaking game is full of bugs and hard locks.
Anyway, I go back and forth on this. I don't know which solution is better. I think it's gotta be down to simply personal preference. I think both sides has it's flaws.
PC flaws:
- I swear to god I'm so sick of updating drivers, for anything. Graphics drivers should just be auto-updated, period. Not even to have a button in the ATI/Nvidia control panel is good enough. As it stands now, there are too many steps. Yea yea it's more safe to do it this way now, where if a driver is broke they can revoke it. But it's the same issue windows was having. Either deal with that, or deal with most users not upgrading at all.
- All games should have built in patching mechanisms. Steam does this right now, as do EA games or GFWL. But what if a game isn't? Or what if I want to buy a game from say GOG or Gamersgate. They don't auto patch. So ur stuck back in the days of yore, hunting down patches from fileplanet or something. That's bull and I flat out refuse.
-Small dev Q&A problems. I love freakin Red Orchestra 2 and Arma 2. Amazing games. But the bugs. Oh the bugs. Jesus it's terrible. Don't even bother playing a game until it's been out 6 months.
Console flaws:
- No support of alternative games. Read: MMO or F2P. Short of DC universe for PS3 or free realms, it's out. But that's a big segment of the future and part of the solution to keeping online communities big and a steady, not one-off, revenue stream. And consoles could OWN this market, but they don't. They could make a badass-looking (compared to the PC F2P's right now which have to be simple enough to run on IGP's) MMO's or F2P's. But nooo.
- No digital downloads for everything. There are a few games I want. Can't get em. Both ps3 and xbox only have like 20% of their titles available. Even on the ps3, you can't download most sony games. Pathetic (resistance 3 I'm looking at u). And the prices are atrocious. $60 or $40 for games that are only $30 or $15-20 online retail. And more money for a game without shipping or physical presence AND is locked to an account? Who in their right mind would buy it?
- No mouse/keyboard support. I'm not saying they should do it across the board like most people who throw out this argument do. No, consoles are meant to be played with a controller. HOWEVER, make keyboard support only for some genres, like strategy. There are barely any RTS games. This would allow them access to the market.
- Not a problem yet: will the next gen of consoles display in true 1080p? Don't forget they have to support people who still have 720p TV's. And don't forget a lot of people have an older tv with an older hdmi port. They can't do 1080p at 30 fps. So you may have a case of spending all that money again to buy a new tv, so the case of more money on PC's is moot. And they may STILL not be in 1080p so games will look like true ass
Hah, I was waiting for it. Waiting for the first post to bring up your argument. I've been reading slashdot for way too long.
Don't forget that console games have tons of bugs now too. And big huge flaws. The Skyrim save game issue? Bioshock always messing up widescreen? Rockstar grand theft everything. Silent Hill Downpour--the entire freaking game is full of bugs and hard locks.
Anyway, I go back and forth on this. I don't know which solution is better. I think it's gotta be down to simply personal preference. I think both sides has it's flaws.
PC flaws:
- I swear to god I'm so sick of updating drivers, for anything. Graphics drivers should just be auto-updated, period. Not even to have a button in the ATI/Nvidia control panel is good enough. As it stands now, there are too many steps. Yea yea it's more safe to do it this way now, where if a driver is broke they can revoke it. But it's the same issue windows was having. Either deal with that, or deal with most users not upgrading at all.
- All games should have built in patching mechanisms. Steam does this right now, as do EA games or GFWL. But what if a game isn't? Or what if I want to buy a game from say GOG or Gamersgate. They don't auto patch. So ur stuck back in the days of yore, hunting down patches from fileplanet or something. That's bull and I flat out refuse.
-Small dev Q&A problems. I love freakin Red Orchestra 2 and Arma 2. Amazing games. But the bugs. Oh the bugs. Jesus it's terrible. Don't even bother playing a game until it's been out 6 months.
Console flaws:
- No support of alternative games. Read: MMO or F2P. Short of DC universe for PS3 or free realms, it's out. But that's a big segment of the future and part of the solution to keeping online communities big and a steady, not one-off, revenue stream. And consoles could OWN this market, but they don't. They could make a badass-looking (compared to the PC F2P's right now which have to be simple enough to run on IGP's) MMO's or F2P's. But nooo.
- No digital downloads for everything. There are a few games I want. Can't get em. Both ps3 and xbox only have like 20% of their titles available. Even on the ps3, you can't download most sony games. Pathetic (resistance 3 I'm looking at u). And the prices are atrocious. $60 or $40 for games that are only $30 or $15-20 online retail. And more money for a game without shipping or physical presence AND is locked to an account? Who in their right mind would buy it?
- No mouse/keyboard support. I'm not saying they should do it across the board like most people who throw out this argument do. No, consoles are meant to be played with a controller. HOWEVER, make keyboard support only for some genres, like strategy. There are barely any RTS games. This would allow them access to the market.
Spoken like a true fanboy. "If apple chooses not to do so or isn't good at it, it's not neccesary." Did you hear yourself?
He didn't say that at all. Apple doesn't care about enterprise customers because that's not their market. They also aren't making point-of-sale terminals. So what? There's lots of evidence that their interest in the professional market is fading. These days Apple is mostly about consumers.
My original point WAS talking about the enterprise and RIM was/is succeeding there. And he wrote back, in essence, that "so what?--because Apple doesn't care about enterprise." So yes, as someone with a UID as low as yours is knows, that is the EXACT phrase every Apple fanboy has used since the dawn of Apple.
Since Apple isn't adapting to the enterprise, lots of enterprises are adapting to Apple. Companies are figuring out ways of supporting iPhones or are simply letting employees bring their own device.
Brilliant move. Read your sentence again as well. Companies are knowingly planning and implenting significant resources into not only the ONE product of *one* company, but a company who's very DNA and entire lifetime history is one of absolute *shitting* on its enterprise customers. EOL'ing everything. EOL all enterprise and server products. For goodness sake they're even practically abandoning their consumer *laptop* market. The newest OSX has had MAJOR issues in the software unfixed (battery fixes, etc.) since when now? And lastly, don't forget that most companies that say they support it, they mean maybe support for email and that's about it.
If this was any other product or any other company, IT managers wouldn't DARE, in a million years, support a move like that.
And have you ever used an iDevice?
Have you? If all of your apps are crashing all of the time, then I think you have a hardware problem. Your experience isn't typical.
Yup. 3GS. And it is. Even that article 6 months ago validates it ("iOS apps crash more than Android" article or something of that sort). Not my device either. Buddy has a 4, another has a 4, another has a 3GS. Most app devs can't even be bothered to implement SSL with their highly sensative customer data (Southwest, and that article a while back--what is it, like 40% IIRC?)--you think they give a damn about program stability or QA?
If you're doing professional music editing on a smartphone on the road, please. You're not a music professional then.
By professional, do you mean commercial? For most people, making music is a creative or artistic endeavor and has nothing to do with being professional.
You're validating my point again. I said playing piano was nothing more than a dick-waving thing to do on your phone. And you just said it wasn't for important use, but for screwing around with. Different how?
Addressed this in another post. Simply needed a change. Was using the BB OS for a while now. Just wanted something fresh. I love technology and tinkering. Wanted something new to tinker with. And a FYI, my next phone is going to be a BB. Love Android, just miss how efficient and lightning fast the BB lets you be at phone email and text tasks.
This wasn't meant to be a flamewar about apple. It was about RIM. But if you want to start it, that's fine by me.
The problem with that theory is that a LOT of very technical people were the ones that adopted Apple laptops early and propelled them to success.
No. Just no. This is why people adopted Apple laptops in the beginning:
- People wanted shiny. They were bored with the XP workhorse and wanted something different /.
- It was the beginning of the online malware epidemic (not the simple viruses of yore) and Apple touted not getting them to suckers (which as we all know was, as especially now, is false)
- Apple users who were on OS 9 and while being spoonfed shit ('96-7 on) for so many years finally had an upgrade path.
- The apple cultists and fanboys, who had to rabidly defend their platform of choice here on 'ol
Let's not forget that the early OSX days were painful. And it didn't even have iTunes or any of this modern feature-added stuff it has today. It has GPU accelerated shiny graphics and that's IT. It was a stability and buggy nightmare until 10.3/10.4. So please, short of "ooh shiny", that was the main reason to upgrade, which is my original point.
Similarity for the iPhone a lot of the early users I knew were very technical people who could understand the benefits offered.
Anecdotal evidence does not an argument make. Most of the people I knew who were early purchasers were total douches who were fake hipsters and had to go around the party and show everyone their new Apple phone and, no kidding, actually had one guy without prompt from me say "and it doesn't have 3G, but Apple is so about the usability it doesn't matter". I kid you not. And technical benefits? Like when it was released in what, 2007, it didn't have 3G which was in use for years by then and don't forget by blackberry, but didn't have an App store either? Yes, so technically superior.
You don't seem very technically inclined yourself or you would have observed the percentage of MacBooks at technical conferences/gatherings...
Again, my point elsewhere in this thread about apple being a marketing and image company. They all use their workhouse windows 7 laptop at work, but when they attend their conference, they want to be seen using that apple logo. And your UID is low enough to know I'm right.
I have a blackberry bold, from work. New 7.1 OS. Touchscreen, aluminum design obviously takes from iPhone. yay.
Which one? Because that new bold 9900 or the Torch looks absolutely *nothing* like the iPhone *at all.*
But it sucks. Partly it's a chimera, gestures on the touchscreen battle with gestures from the keypad. The phone is awkwardly sized, trying to get a landscape wide screen with a need for a keypad.
Uh, unless you're going to type something out, your hands stay entirely on the touchpad. If I'm not typing an email, my hands won't ever leave the touchscreen if I don't want to. And if you want, it doesn't even have to leave the keyboard--use the trackpad. And there is even a software keyboard if you don't want to leave the touchpad IIRC. You get the choice and I'm not seeing how your workflow is affected.
The OS is better, but still lacks basic things. They've tried hard to embed Twitter in the OS for example, but the browser is horrible. Being horrible is in fact an improvement - the old browser made me want to stick a fork in my eye.
Point taken. But Android's stock browser is pretty bad too, and while mobile Safari is the best, it's the best of the worst. It doesn't even have a "view as desktop" if u ever need to actually use the full featured web page. And if you hate the stock BB browser, nothing is stopping you from getting Opera Mobile. Do you see people throwing a fit on iOS for using Dolphin or Skyfire?
So, built in apps: It has a killer app (BBM) that is hard to use. Its usefulness depends on network effects, and as people move away from Blackberry, BBM becomes less useful. iMessage is shows you how this should have worked from the beginning, and as iMessage gets broader adoption (any iOS 5 device, and soon OSX 10.8 will do iMessage), BBM will become even less essential, and Blackberrys also.
BB does have access to most if not all of the mainstream Apps as well you know. And with BBM, I could make the same argument. All my friends don't use iDevices. So iMessage is worthless to me. See how that works?
A Bold is too expensive and bulky to be a simple phone, and very bad at being a smartphone. Even charging is a pain now - my Bold takes more current than other BBs so a subset of my chargers don't work any more. Though iPads warn you of this, they still charge (slowly), With RIM, you're SOL. This is why they're sitting on inventory.
Too bulky? The reverse is true. Try holding that new bold 9900. It's actually the *perfect* width for typing and use. And as for charging, you're telling me BB doesn't have a micro/mini-whatever USB port for charging? Or that it won't let you charge? Not buying it.
Apple of course doesn't care about enterprise, but it doesn't seem to make business sense for them to care. If it would make business sense, I'm sure as heck they'd care. I personally think it's quite cool that you can do quite serious music playing and editing on iDevices. It's cool that these days you can have a general purpose computer in your phone, with an interaction surface sensitive enough to simulate a dynamic instrument keyboard or a tracker/sequencer button array.
Spoken like a true fanboy. "If apple chooses not to do so or isn't good at it, it's not neccesary." Did you hear yourself? That said, I really don't think you're a fanboy, but see my point? And have you ever used an iDevice? 98% of the apps crash all the time, are buggy, and have 20% of the features of their *web brethren* which are only like 30-50% of desktop brethren. What's the point of having an App if for most of what you do you have to go home to use your desktop to get something done? And you're example, cmon. If you're doing professional music editing on a smartphone on the road, please. You're not a music professional then. You're just exactly the silly type of person I described in my OP.
I'm sure that about 30% of slashdot users would disagree with you, considering that I bet you most of them run or are at the top of managing their enterprise or IT dept. But go on thinking that.
And yes, it's innovate to give someone an iPhone with unsecured business email to a fortune 500 company with trade secrets! And it's so NOT innovate for RIM to implement quite possibly the most innovative kernel ever produced, QNX, to run it's OS in the next phone.
You do realize that the information about write downs, poor sales, and declining financials is coming from Rim, don't you?
You do realize how journalism and PR works, especially in the tech industry, don't you? Businesses and companies write their own stuff or propose angles to "journalists" and then those so called journalists put them on their "news" website. If you look at there 10-K's and Q's--they are posted publicy. But who do you think is posting them--are you reading them from RIM's financial statement on blackberry.com or whatever? No, you're not. And let's not forget the majority of the articles are opinion pieces talking about "what rim needs to do" or "rim is dying blah blah blah". Sounds an awful like the situation with the incessant "Linux is dying" articles by our fav friend dvorak.
That's a sweet deal. I come from the financial sector. There, you NEED a BB. You don't even get a choice, and for good reason. One breach and it's millions/billions. I see your point though.
Though if I were a CTO I wouldn't allow anything other than BB's and definitely no BYOD's. And I'd only let people remotely in via VPN's and passcode generator devices. But that's me. Trade secrets are too important.
I smell the fanboys getting rabid. Only a fanboy would down mod this sensible post.