I dunno if I agree with this list entirely. And as for Nonfanboyism -- if this magazine is so nonbiased, why are the winners (other than Okami) pretty much the most hyped video game products available?
Final Fantasy, let's face facts, it won because it's Final Fantasy. No one would be hyped for it to the same degree if it had been "Naked Empire XII" or anything else that didn't say Final Fantasy. Going by PLAYER reviews on Gamefaq, most people seem to be bored silly by the gambits and lack of story. Secondly, the exact battle system (minus gambits) was used in FFXI and was modified from Everquest and other MMOs. The Gambits only seem to be present to allow a single player to control multiple characters in psuedo-realtime.
Same for DQ8. The visual style that's "best of the year" is virtually identical to the Dragon Ball Z: Budakai series. Yet the DBZ games don't get a mention here. Once again, Edge picks a popular series even when others have already done the same thing.
Wii and DS are good systems, don't get me wrong, but they also happen to be some of the most hyped systems out there. You can't read a game magazine or watch a game related show without hearing about them. So being that they're already popular and everybody already wants one, I don't see how they can be praised for "independence" when at every turn, they pick the most popular item.
If I'd seen anything on this list that wasn't already well known, or a system that wasn't already popular, I'd give them far more credit. To my mind, you lose the right to the "nonfanboy" and "independant" labels when you give your awards to popular games and products. Where are the indie games? The game that's awesome that no one has ever heard of?
I think that's true, but another thing Sci-Fis never really get right is the types of people who will go to these colonies.
When the Americas were colonized, it wasn't by and large the Well-To-Do, well-educated, aristocrats who left everything behind for America. Yes there were a few dreamers, and I won't deny it. However, most people who came weren't rich. They were the peasants, the cultural outcasts, and so on. Lord Fauntleroy wasn't interested in building the colonies. But for a peasant, it was their last chance. I think that's going to effect space travel and colonies far more than people realize.
We think Space Travel, and see Kirk beating up a klingon. Chances are that the real explorers will be 3rd worlders from Africa and South Asia, etc. On Earth, for good or for ill, the US, Europe, and other First World nations are Aristocrats. I just don't see rich Americans playing X-box being the type of people to colonize space. I think that for humanity, this is a good thing -- just don't expect the money to come into American coffers.
This has other problems as well -- namely language. Sure most highly-educated people can probably speak passable English, but I have my doubts that a random person on this planet can read -- literacy rates in many parts of the world are horrible -- let alone speak English. We'll have to solve such a problem before we can have large scale open colonization. What exactly do you do when you have large, barely literate colonists all speaking different, unrelated languages? How do you counter ethnic strife caused by bringing Serbs and Croats together, or Indians and Pakistanis, or any other groups. How do you get an emergency message around, or give safety warnings, etc. in 25 languages, and so that marginally literate new arrivals can understand them? What happens if two religious groups get into a fight -- Sunni Vs Shia in Iraq, or Christians Vs Atheists, who knows.
The long term problems of Space Exploration are more likely to be human conflicts and inequalities we bring along from Earth, much more so than anything Technological. If the scientific leadership (the first astronauts and engineers who know how the station works), do things (intentional or unintentional) that inflame people's passions, you could fairly easily end up in a riot or worst-case war that could destroy the colony.
Well, for one thing, consensus is *not* how truth is decided. Yet that's essentially the Wikipedia model. The thought is that 700 people who know nothing about relativity can come to the truth about what relativity is and how it works, just by essentially modifying the misunderstood portions the last person left. That's not how truth works. Truth isn't decided based on what everybody agrees on, it's discovered.
Think about medicine for a second. Would you rather have 500 enthusiastic amatuers doing surgery, each correcting something that the other thought was wrong, or would you rather go to a brain surgeon, who has studied medicine for years? The doctor has a much better chance of getting it right than amatuers.
Secondly, with experts, I can usually manage to figure out who they are and where they came from. Even using Wpedia's History, most users are 1337ster_275, or worse yet, an IP address. Well, that's not reassuring at all. Knowing that the author or contibuter was Thomas Gadfly, pH.D. from the University of Montana would mean something. Not the least of which is that he actually makes a living working in that field. He's studied the subject, not skimmed a "Physics of Star Trek" book and declared himself an expert. Who is 1337ster_275? Did he finish high school?
And with all due respect, how do you know enough to know if the Wpedia article is "fishy"? All that the History says is "it changed", so was it corrected, or was it reverted back to a wrong but popular version? It will always come down to trust, and since there's no way to check back on the various writers, it comes down to blind faith in the power of the consensus.
I could see Wpedia as a way to look for search terms on the way to getting the facts and legitamate sources. I could see using Wpedia in an internet debate where nothing was really at stake. Just not in research papers and the like where it's imperative that your facts are accurate.
I think what's eventually going to happen is that people will stop buying the next big thing to come out. You can already see this to some extent in the TV/Video market. HD has been available for a long time and still hasn't cracked the 25% mark. HD-DVDs and Blu-Rays aren't major players in the video market, heck, you can still find VHS available in WalMarts and other discount stores.
I think it's going to happen in other areas. Why upgrade to technolgy that you have to re-learn when your old Wordperfect and Peachtree works just fine? Why get a 200GHz machine when all you do is email? I'm probably not as technophillic as some people here, but I don't think most people buy new computers just because they're faster than the old, especially when what they're doing is email, word processing and possibly web-based games.
I think you'll see the same as with other devices, people will buy the computer that does the minimum they need and keep that pc until it's not useable anymore.
I can see you're point, and yes most of the time you end up pressing X for most battles over and over. But that's not true with all turn based rpgs. You can do plenty of things with the combat system that don't involve auto-battle. You could do what was done in the early FF and have some monsters that can only be killed with magic. You can break up regular battles with duels or RTS style battles (both are done by suikoden). Judgement rings (Shadow Hearts) or even making battlefield positioning matter (something like tactics). You could add a charge time to magics or other special moves. I can think of any number of things that could be done with the battle system that don't involve "let the ps2 fight for me".
I'm glad you can turn off the gambits, and I'll probably end up trying it that way. Still, to my mind, it speaks to the view that a lot of game companies seem to have for their players. Just give them the purties, and if the game is too hard, it's better to have the machine handle the hard stuff. The dumbasses will get all flusterated if they have to think, especially if it ain't a boss battle.
Some parts of the system seem like an improvement. I like the flexability of the liscence grid, I like seeing the monsters on the map, and even that money is made by doing quests rather than finding gold in the slime's pockets.
The story sounds pretty decent as well, more political rather than "teens save the world, hero gets a girl" cliche.
What I and the other so-called "old school FF fans" are leary of is a game in which I'll spend 80% of my time watching my ps2 play the game. I know that programming AI might be fun, but at the end of the day, what you'll end up doing is setting up AI at the start of a new area and then leaving the machine to auto-battle for you. Maybe they should have added auto-run as well so the player can set the controller down and watch, without having to do boring things -- like play the game.
That's what I don't like about the direction that FFXII is taking. It's like they finally realized that the normal (non-boss) battles are boring as hell, and rather than go to the trouble of making the battles hard enough to be interesting, they allow the player to set up AI, and then watch while the ps2 fights. What they should have done is make the regular battles harder or more strategic. What they decided to do instead seems almost like an insult. I buy games to play them, not to watch as my computer or gaming console plays them for me. If I don't want to play, I'll pop in a DVD instead.
If they keep this retarded system for future FFs, I'm not buying them.
300+ people camping out for a console many days in advance, that most people on Digg and Slashdot said wouldn't sell.
People camp out for lots of things. With the DS, there were people camped out for the launch of each new color
Selling out ~100k consoles in record time in Japan.
The Japanese will always buy the Japanese console, no matter how cheap or how good the Gaijin console is. Bill Gates could pay the Japanese to take an Xbox360 home, they'll still buy Sony because Sony is Japanese.
Selling out every preorder in America in record time.
Wow, 40,000 pre-orders. Compared to millions of literal working Xbox360s in homes right now. A pre-order simply reserves one and gives you the option of buying, not every pre-orderer will return to pay for the ps3. It happens with all preorders.
Seeing that people are already camping in the U.S. over a week in advance.
People camped out for months to watch Phantom Menance. So there's actually less interest in ps3 than Jar Jar Binks. Color me impressed.
Selling another 100k per week for the rest of the year in Japan.
Where did you get the time machine, dude? Ps3 has been out in Japan for less than a week. You have no idea what will happen for the rest of the year. Just wait until the Wii comes out in Japan. I doubt as many ps3s will sell with competition from a Japanese console.
More than likely selling 400,000 units in American as fast as the stores can process the orders on launch day.
Another message from the Future? Now you can predict the sales before they're even available for purchase in America. Your talents are wasted shilling for Sony. With this uncanny ability to predict the future, you should work for Homeland Security.
Obviously selling out the second shipment to America ~600k by the end of the year.
Seriously stop predicting stuff no one can possibly know.
Having a launch lineup of around 20+ titles, downloadable demos and music day one.
And our Gigantic System Seller? A game the average gamer is dying to play? Anyone? Anyone? Buehler? Buehler?
Seeing that you just sold more BlueRay players in Japan, in one day than all HD-DVD players world wide for the entire year.:-)
Seeing that HD-DVD is cheaper to make, both for the players and the media itself, and thus is cheaper for the public, I don't see an advantage.:-)
Seeing that you will sell 8X as many BlueRay players in America, in one day than all HD-DVD players sold last year world wide, and giving them a "test" movie to help them try out playing movies.:-)
Seeing that a ton of people are willing to pay 2 and even 4 times the list price to get a PS3 on Ebay.
Seeing that you can buy a grilled cheese sandwhich with a burn mark that looks like Jesus, or if you prefer Elvis, all I see is that people are willing to pay lots of money for items of questionable value.
Being able to produce ~6 million consoles by March of 2006, and having a market that looks like it will buy every last one of them.
What market? The ones that already have an Xbox or the ones that are Drooling over the Wii?
Having a "last gen" console still continually outsell your competitors "next gen" system month after month.
The Last Gen Console breaks easily, and is being repurchased.
Providing support for Yellow Dog Linux out of the gate and also helping with OpenGL (setting it as the default for all PS3 games, thus helping out the entire open source community).
And pushing DRM to the point where the system is more locked down than Windows.
Helping to make 1080P a reality in console gaming.
For the 15% of American households rich enough to afford any type of HD. The government has been trying to force HD-TV instead of CRT TV since the 90's. We were supposed to have HD-only-TV in the mid 1990's. It's still so expensive that people can'
For one thing, you're talking about Japan choosing ps3 over xbox. I'll let you in on a secret about Japan. If there are two comperable systems one from Japan and one from anywhere else, Japanese will by the Japanese product. The complaints were price-related, at least as far as I can tell, and price won't deter the Japanese public from buying the Japanese product whilst leaving the similar American product in the dust.
Call it patriotism, xenophobia, racism, whatever. That's just how the consumer culture is. No nonJapanese company is going to make large inroads into a market where there are Japanese alternatives. No such Bias exists in the USA. In the USA, the only question is whether the product is a good deal.
Another thing, I believe that there are FAR FAR more HDTVs in Japan than the us, so things like Blu-Ray and HD output matter to a great many Japanese people. In the states, HD is only important for 15% of the population rich enough to afford HDTVs. For the rest of us, we won't be able to tell the graphical difference between XBOX and PS3, and you might need to squint to tell that the image is from a Wii screenshot. This negates the big selling point for ps3 -- graphics.
The reason that I think you ought to listen to the American gamers is simple. That's the base Sony is sopposed to be aiming for -- people Hard-Core enough to follow gaming news and comment on their favourite games. Frankly, as these were JRPG fans, frankly, most of them pretty well expect that their favorite 80-hour timesink will be ps3 exclusive. They aren't excited, hell, they aren't interested. They may eventually buy one IF their favourites remain ps3 exclusives.
They won't remain exclusives if no one buys a ps3. It's a vicious cycle -- everyone will wait for "their game" before buying the ps3, meaning that each game is more likely to port to another console, one that already has a big install base to support the millions of dollars that went into making the game. If there aren't a few million ps3s out there, it's not worth the effort. Square won't make back the millions of dollars on FF13 if there are only 50,000 consoles in the US. Even 1 million may be too small an install base.
Yeah, but I think they should have skipped the irrelevant first page. People who follow the console wars have already abandoned ps3, by and large. I say that because for all the game forums I'm on (and most like console RPGs, which the ps2 had tons of), I have yet to find one single person excited about the ps3. Their biggest potential fanbase isn't there. At the most you'll hear a noncommittal "I'll wait for [game X]", or "I'll wait for the price to drop". When the fanbase isn't excited, no one else will be.
Now as I said, this isn't a completely scientific survey, it's trolling around on gaming forums. But just from that alone, don't expect the "hardcore" to go for ps3. The nonhardcore won't buy for $600, even if the machine was smart enough to cook their breakfast, clean their house, and drive the car. Which leaves one potential fanbase for ps3 -- very rich gamers who don't follow gaming news (all 4 of them). Which means that quite possibly this is going to be the first console auctioned on ebay that doesn't sell.
ps3 is already "Dreamcasted", even before it ships. If sony was smart they'd drop the ps3 and do what sega does -- just make games.
Of course they're not worried about the price. They can't even make any ps3s. I think they're gonna try to get as much as they can out of the overpriced DRM-machine before they give up on it and concentrate on making exploding laptop batteries.
The people who are most excited about Sony's complete lack of credibility are the XBOX360 people and the Wii people. Sony's already lost most of it's fanbase, and by the time the ps3 is actually available, most ps2 owners will have already bought another console. It only makes sense when you can buy a 360 and a Wii plus a Wii game for less than the unavailable ps3.
Maybe I'm exaggerating slightly with the paperweight thing. But really, Sony should pray that the competition is tight, rather than that they are a distant third. That's where I'd predict them. For all intents and purposes, their debut (as in joe blow has a reasonable chance of walking out of the store with a ps3, not a name on the waiting list) is probably spring '07. So they're coming out 4 months after the Wii, and 18 months after the 360. By the time the ps3 is available, the war could easily be over, which wouldn't make them necessarily out of the race completely, just have a hard uphill battle. Add in the cost, and there's no way the race is ps3/360, it's 360/Wii.
Maybe Square will throw a minor FF spinnoff to the ps3, and maybe there will be a few minor games, but likely the ps3 will end up with a selection much like the GameCube has now -- 80% first party, 10% ports, and a few minor 3rd party games. That isn't worth $600. wait until next spring. I think by then, very few games promised for ps3 will still be exclusive. FFXIII and Metal Gear 4 will probably be ported and most of the other big ps franchises will follow.
Comparing the ps3 to a farrari doesn't make sense.
in the console market, there are only 4 options (one being the pc). You simply can't take the farari approach to marketing, because the biggest sell point is the games available. To get a large library of games, you simply must have a huge install base. The problem being that the average consumer isn't going to buy the most expensive console out there. And where the average consumer goes with console money is where the games will be. ps3 will essentially be a paperweight. a $600 paperweight.
In fact, this is a major reason why I'm no longer excited about the ps3. Yes it looks great. The games announced for it sound good. But when the dust settles on the next console wars, most of the games will have either switched consoles or have gone multi-console because the ps3 is essentially priced out of the reach of most people buying a console. The average consumer walking into best buy or gamestop will see a used Xbox360 for $300, and if they can find any at all, the ps3 is twice that. Wii at $250 is even less. So 90% of the people walking in wanting a ps3 (assuming that in a parralel universe it was reasonable to assume you could find one), will walk out with the competitions console.
He stole his prediction from the book "Time Machine", published around the turn of the last century.
The Utopian existence of the Eloi turns out to be deceptive. The Traveller soon discovers that the class structure of his own time has in fact persisted, and the human race has diverged into two branches. The wealthy, leisure classes appear to have evolved into the ineffectual, not very bright Eloi he has already seen; but the downtrodden working classes have evolved into the bestial Morlocks, cannibal hominids resembling albino apes, who toil underground maintaining the machinery that keep the Eloi - their flocks - docile and plentiful. Both species, having adapted to their routines, are of distinctly sub-human intelligence.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine
This is the wrong direction to be going, IMO. Not that episodic content by itself is bad, but that it seems to me that we'll end up with time-sensitive downloaded levels.
So to play say GT6, you'd buy a car and a track, but because of the way the downloads are made, after a day or two, you'll need to swipe your credit card again if you want to play with the same card on the same track. I've already seen that on a few downloaded cheapy games, sure you can try them, but after a set time, the game locks and becomes useless -- unless you pay. That's going to be mighty painful if you're going to have to pay $10 or $20 every time you boot up XBOX^3 or whatever they'll call it.
I think the biggest problem has nothing to do with the structure of the company, it has to do with the content of the games themselves.
First off, you have a lot of copycatting going on. Everybody wants in on the big trend, so they're trying to recreate the big game of the year. There aren't many that aren't essentially clones of some other game. Ico, DDR, Katamari, Okami and Gitar Hero are new games. Most of the rest are pretty generic, to the point where if you've played one game in the genre, the rest are rentals -- because other than the graphic art, they play identically. And that's not even counting the sequels of the generic games.
Secondly, especially for TV/movie games, most franchise games are made with very little understanding of what made the series good to begin with. http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/strategy/startrekl egacy/screenindex.html?part=rss&subj=6152227 This is just one example. I don't know how you could watch a show where 90% of the time, they negotiate their way out of danger and decide that the best thing to make with the franchise is a shooting game. I won't even bother bringing up Anime franchises.
This has nothing to do with ST being still a good brand-name. This is about idiots willing to drop $45,000,000 for bits of sets. The Ent D seats look almost exactly like minivan seats, yet they go for $200,000.
It's a feeding frenzy based on the idea that "rare" is the same as valuable. Same as what happened in St. Louis when they tore down old Busch Stadium. You could buy just about anything -- and people did. I don't know exactly *why* people were paying thousands of dollars for used urinals from old Busch, but I guess they figured that urinals go UP in value once the building they were housed in comes down. And much like this auction, I think the value is highest right now. The grandkids might say "Daddy, what's a Vulcan" and simply not get it. Beanie babies are worth all of about $10 now, even though at the height of popularity, people were paying hundreds of dollars for them.
Well, what I'm suggesting is that even FF13 will probably eventually switch consoles. There simply aren't enough people interested in the ps3 to justify putting Square's flagship title as an exclusive on the ps3. People don't buy consoles for just one game.
But why would Square-Enix neccesarily release all of their products on ps3? For one thing, as much "love" as PS3 gets from gamers, I don't see a lot of hard-core gamers going for the PS3. And with the high price point, I don't see nonhardcores going for a ps3 either.
And given that SE and any number of other devs need to sell their games, I can't imagine they're going to put their game on a system that has a tiny install base. Even if 10% of their fans would buy ps3 just for FF, that won't be enough for SE to make a profit on. They'll go to where the biggest install base is, which won't be ps3, even in Japan. I think that eventually FF will be on either 360 or Wii.
Even if string theory fails as a theory, it's still an attempt to provide a mathematical model for space, matter, and the various forces. It is falsifiable in the simple sense that if it predicts things that are at odds with known theories and observations, there's a problem that would have to be resolved. If string theory could be falsified in this sense, it would have been dropped long ago. To qualify as scientific, it doesn't actually have to make new predictions, particularly in the realm it's operating in. ID makes absolutely no comparable predictions, other than, as I said, "That's what God wanted".
We're at a point in fundamental theoretical physics were progress is incredibly difficult because of the limitations on our ability to analyze the necessary structures. Those limitations aren't going away any time soon - the next generation of accelerators might help a little, but quite likely not in any major way. For all we know at the moment, it's possible that we'll never discover a better theory of everything than the Standard Model + GR + SR. So does that mean we should stop trying? At this point, one of the best tools we have is mathematics, and that's what ST is exploiting.
ST has some suspicious features: with so many degrees of freedom, and so few ways to experimentally constrain those freedoms, it can be tweaked endlessly to produce the desired results. However, that in itself doesn't mean that there's not a workable theory there. Think of it as exploring a mathematical space, looking for something which fits our universe. In fact, it's not that different from how previous theoretical discoveries were made, except that the mathematics of previous theories was trivial by comparison, so it was much easier to hit on the "right" theory in the space being explored.
You might claim that ST is a bad scientific theory, or a failed scientific theory, but to say that it's comparable with ID shows a serious lack of understanding of the distinction between science and fantasy.
So show me the testible accurate predictions (and I mean things discovered AFTER String "Theory" was proposed). If String Theory was scientific, surely at some point in the last 40 years, something predicted by String Theory must have been discovered.
It is true that ST isn't political yet, but really that's about the only difference between String Theory and Intelligent Design. It's faith, and I'm from the Show-Me-State.
To be "highbrow" or a classic, the game must have layers of appreciation. Insert oblig. onion reference here.
1) The action itself 2) References to other things in the pop-culture 3) References to things in current events 4) References to real history 5) A statement about something - even if it is trivial 6) Engaging characters
Start counting how many games have these elements and then you will have a real list. --- Off the top of my head:
Star Ocean: Til the End of time Final Fantasy IV to VII StarCraft
This kind of thinking is exactly what will eventually cause another video game crash. Oh, no those silly gamers don't really want a fun game, they want big bloated FMVs and Voice Acting. In fact, They'll pass up a game with crappy graphics in favor of our new graphics-fest, even if there's only 10 minutes of walking down a hallway in between 30 minute movies -- for 120 hours.
Nope, I'd far rather play a great game with decent graphics rather than some "game designer"'s wannabe movie. And I can't imagine that 80% of the gaming market is made up of people who would rather watch a game than play one. Eventually, the graphics will all be photo-realistic, and then there won't be any market for games with no gameplay.
You forgot comic books. People honestly thought Batman comics and True Crime comic books would make kids go out and kill people. Before that, I think Flappers were the end of Western Civilization.
In fact, I think everything that came along since the Roman Era has been the "End of Western Civilization". Kids have always been lazier and less interested in knowledge than privious generations. Evil currupting forces have always pulled them from the Straight and Narrow(TM). Even Christianity, when it first came along was a threat.
I think part of the reason that other companies choose the "Agile" methods rather than the "Google" method is the problem of the customer. The customer needing a custom application needs it by a certain time or it could become outdated or downright useless. Tax software complient with 2006 tax codes are useless after April 15th, 2007. Or if you're making custom software for manufacturing, you can't leave the client without his software after the plant opens, he'll probably cancel the contract. Virus updates would be another big "can't be late" kind of issue. Waitng a month before you can stop a new virus probably means a cancelled contract, and a lot fewer customers.
Google can do this, and pretty much any company that can set its own time-table can use "Google Agile" methods. But you're limited to just those products where a delay of a few weeks or months isn't a major issue. It's simply not true for every type of software developer out there.
Maybe "Agile" methods aren't the absolute best out there, but there are cases where it's simply not possible to use "Google Agile" methods.
Slashdot Mirror
Final Fantasy, let's face facts, it won because it's Final Fantasy. No one would be hyped for it to the same degree if it had been "Naked Empire XII" or anything else that didn't say Final Fantasy. Going by PLAYER reviews on Gamefaq, most people seem to be bored silly by the gambits and lack of story. Secondly, the exact battle system (minus gambits) was used in FFXI and was modified from Everquest and other MMOs. The Gambits only seem to be present to allow a single player to control multiple characters in psuedo-realtime.
Same for DQ8. The visual style that's "best of the year" is virtually identical to the Dragon Ball Z: Budakai series. Yet the DBZ games don't get a mention here. Once again, Edge picks a popular series even when others have already done the same thing.
Wii and DS are good systems, don't get me wrong, but they also happen to be some of the most hyped systems out there. You can't read a game magazine or watch a game related show without hearing about them. So being that they're already popular and everybody already wants one, I don't see how they can be praised for "independence" when at every turn, they pick the most popular item.
If I'd seen anything on this list that wasn't already well known, or a system that wasn't already popular, I'd give them far more credit. To my mind, you lose the right to the "nonfanboy" and "independant" labels when you give your awards to popular games and products. Where are the indie games? The game that's awesome that no one has ever heard of?
When the Americas were colonized, it wasn't by and large the Well-To-Do, well-educated, aristocrats who left everything behind for America. Yes there were a few dreamers, and I won't deny it. However, most people who came weren't rich. They were the peasants, the cultural outcasts, and so on. Lord Fauntleroy wasn't interested in building the colonies. But for a peasant, it was their last chance. I think that's going to effect space travel and colonies far more than people realize.
We think Space Travel, and see Kirk beating up a klingon. Chances are that the real explorers will be 3rd worlders from Africa and South Asia, etc. On Earth, for good or for ill, the US, Europe, and other First World nations are Aristocrats. I just don't see rich Americans playing X-box being the type of people to colonize space. I think that for humanity, this is a good thing -- just don't expect the money to come into American coffers.
This has other problems as well -- namely language. Sure most highly-educated people can probably speak passable English, but I have my doubts that a random person on this planet can read -- literacy rates in many parts of the world are horrible -- let alone speak English. We'll have to solve such a problem before we can have large scale open colonization. What exactly do you do when you have large, barely literate colonists all speaking different, unrelated languages? How do you counter ethnic strife caused by bringing Serbs and Croats together, or Indians and Pakistanis, or any other groups. How do you get an emergency message around, or give safety warnings, etc. in 25 languages, and so that marginally literate new arrivals can understand them? What happens if two religious groups get into a fight -- Sunni Vs Shia in Iraq, or Christians Vs Atheists, who knows.
The long term problems of Space Exploration are more likely to be human conflicts and inequalities we bring along from Earth, much more so than anything Technological. If the scientific leadership (the first astronauts and engineers who know how the station works), do things (intentional or unintentional) that inflame people's passions, you could fairly easily end up in a riot or worst-case war that could destroy the colony.
Think about medicine for a second. Would you rather have 500 enthusiastic amatuers doing surgery, each correcting something that the other thought was wrong, or would you rather go to a brain surgeon, who has studied medicine for years? The doctor has a much better chance of getting it right than amatuers.
Secondly, with experts, I can usually manage to figure out who they are and where they came from. Even using Wpedia's History, most users are 1337ster_275, or worse yet, an IP address. Well, that's not reassuring at all. Knowing that the author or contibuter was Thomas Gadfly, pH.D. from the University of Montana would mean something. Not the least of which is that he actually makes a living working in that field. He's studied the subject, not skimmed a "Physics of Star Trek" book and declared himself an expert. Who is 1337ster_275? Did he finish high school?
And with all due respect, how do you know enough to know if the Wpedia article is "fishy"? All that the History says is "it changed", so was it corrected, or was it reverted back to a wrong but popular version? It will always come down to trust, and since there's no way to check back on the various writers, it comes down to blind faith in the power of the consensus.
I could see Wpedia as a way to look for search terms on the way to getting the facts and legitamate sources. I could see using Wpedia in an internet debate where nothing was really at stake. Just not in research papers and the like where it's imperative that your facts are accurate.
I think it's going to happen in other areas. Why upgrade to technolgy that you have to re-learn when your old Wordperfect and Peachtree works just fine? Why get a 200GHz machine when all you do is email? I'm probably not as technophillic as some people here, but I don't think most people buy new computers just because they're faster than the old, especially when what they're doing is email, word processing and possibly web-based games.
I think you'll see the same as with other devices, people will buy the computer that does the minimum they need and keep that pc until it's not useable anymore.
I'm glad you can turn off the gambits, and I'll probably end up trying it that way. Still, to my mind, it speaks to the view that a lot of game companies seem to have for their players. Just give them the purties, and if the game is too hard, it's better to have the machine handle the hard stuff. The dumbasses will get all flusterated if they have to think, especially if it ain't a boss battle.
Some parts of the system seem like an improvement. I like the flexability of the liscence grid, I like seeing the monsters on the map, and even that money is made by doing quests rather than finding gold in the slime's pockets.
The story sounds pretty decent as well, more political rather than "teens save the world, hero gets a girl" cliche.
That's what I don't like about the direction that FFXII is taking. It's like they finally realized that the normal (non-boss) battles are boring as hell, and rather than go to the trouble of making the battles hard enough to be interesting, they allow the player to set up AI, and then watch while the ps2 fights. What they should have done is make the regular battles harder or more strategic. What they decided to do instead seems almost like an insult. I buy games to play them, not to watch as my computer or gaming console plays them for me. If I don't want to play, I'll pop in a DVD instead.
If they keep this retarded system for future FFs, I'm not buying them.
Selling out ~100k consoles in record time in Japan. The Japanese will always buy the Japanese console, no matter how cheap or how good the Gaijin console is. Bill Gates could pay the Japanese to take an Xbox360 home, they'll still buy Sony because Sony is Japanese.
Selling out every preorder in America in record time. Wow, 40,000 pre-orders. Compared to millions of literal working Xbox360s in homes right now. A pre-order simply reserves one and gives you the option of buying, not every pre-orderer will return to pay for the ps3. It happens with all preorders.
Seeing that people are already camping in the U.S. over a week in advance. People camped out for months to watch Phantom Menance. So there's actually less interest in ps3 than Jar Jar Binks. Color me impressed.
Selling another 100k per week for the rest of the year in Japan. Where did you get the time machine, dude? Ps3 has been out in Japan for less than a week. You have no idea what will happen for the rest of the year. Just wait until the Wii comes out in Japan. I doubt as many ps3s will sell with competition from a Japanese console.
More than likely selling 400,000 units in American as fast as the stores can process the orders on launch day. Another message from the Future? Now you can predict the sales before they're even available for purchase in America. Your talents are wasted shilling for Sony. With this uncanny ability to predict the future, you should work for Homeland Security.
Obviously selling out the second shipment to America ~600k by the end of the year. Seriously stop predicting stuff no one can possibly know.
Having a launch lineup of around 20+ titles, downloadable demos and music day one. And our Gigantic System Seller? A game the average gamer is dying to play? Anyone? Anyone? Buehler? Buehler?
Seeing that you just sold more BlueRay players in Japan, in one day than all HD-DVD players world wide for the entire year. :-)
Seeing that HD-DVD is cheaper to make, both for the players and the media itself, and thus is cheaper for the public, I don't see an advantage. :-)
Seeing that you will sell 8X as many BlueRay players in America, in one day than all HD-DVD players sold last year world wide, and giving them a "test" movie to help them try out playing movies. :-)
Seeing that a ton of people are willing to pay 2 and even 4 times the list price to get a PS3 on Ebay.
Seeing that you can buy a grilled cheese sandwhich with a burn mark that looks like Jesus, or if you prefer Elvis, all I see is that people are willing to pay lots of money for items of questionable value.
Being able to produce ~6 million consoles by March of 2006, and having a market that looks like it will buy every last one of them. What market? The ones that already have an Xbox or the ones that are Drooling over the Wii?
Having a "last gen" console still continually outsell your competitors "next gen" system month after month. The Last Gen Console breaks easily, and is being repurchased.
Providing support for Yellow Dog Linux out of the gate and also helping with OpenGL (setting it as the default for all PS3 games, thus helping out the entire open source community). And pushing DRM to the point where the system is more locked down than Windows.
Helping to make 1080P a reality in console gaming. For the 15% of American households rich enough to afford any type of HD. The government has been trying to force HD-TV instead of CRT TV since the 90's. We were supposed to have HD-only-TV in the mid 1990's. It's still so expensive that people can'
Call it patriotism, xenophobia, racism, whatever. That's just how the consumer culture is. No nonJapanese company is going to make large inroads into a market where there are Japanese alternatives. No such Bias exists in the USA. In the USA, the only question is whether the product is a good deal.
Another thing, I believe that there are FAR FAR more HDTVs in Japan than the us, so things like Blu-Ray and HD output matter to a great many Japanese people. In the states, HD is only important for 15% of the population rich enough to afford HDTVs. For the rest of us, we won't be able to tell the graphical difference between XBOX and PS3, and you might need to squint to tell that the image is from a Wii screenshot. This negates the big selling point for ps3 -- graphics.
The reason that I think you ought to listen to the American gamers is simple. That's the base Sony is sopposed to be aiming for -- people Hard-Core enough to follow gaming news and comment on their favourite games. Frankly, as these were JRPG fans, frankly, most of them pretty well expect that their favorite 80-hour timesink will be ps3 exclusive. They aren't excited, hell, they aren't interested. They may eventually buy one IF their favourites remain ps3 exclusives.
They won't remain exclusives if no one buys a ps3. It's a vicious cycle -- everyone will wait for "their game" before buying the ps3, meaning that each game is more likely to port to another console, one that already has a big install base to support the millions of dollars that went into making the game. If there aren't a few million ps3s out there, it's not worth the effort. Square won't make back the millions of dollars on FF13 if there are only 50,000 consoles in the US. Even 1 million may be too small an install base.
Now as I said, this isn't a completely scientific survey, it's trolling around on gaming forums. But just from that alone, don't expect the "hardcore" to go for ps3. The nonhardcore won't buy for $600, even if the machine was smart enough to cook their breakfast, clean their house, and drive the car. Which leaves one potential fanbase for ps3 -- very rich gamers who don't follow gaming news (all 4 of them). Which means that quite possibly this is going to be the first console auctioned on ebay that doesn't sell.
ps3 is already "Dreamcasted", even before it ships. If sony was smart they'd drop the ps3 and do what sega does -- just make games.
The people who are most excited about Sony's complete lack of credibility are the XBOX360 people and the Wii people. Sony's already lost most of it's fanbase, and by the time the ps3 is actually available, most ps2 owners will have already bought another console. It only makes sense when you can buy a 360 and a Wii plus a Wii game for less than the unavailable ps3.
Maybe Square will throw a minor FF spinnoff to the ps3, and maybe there will be a few minor games, but likely the ps3 will end up with a selection much like the GameCube has now -- 80% first party, 10% ports, and a few minor 3rd party games. That isn't worth $600. wait until next spring. I think by then, very few games promised for ps3 will still be exclusive. FFXIII and Metal Gear 4 will probably be ported and most of the other big ps franchises will follow.
in the console market, there are only 4 options (one being the pc). You simply can't take the farari approach to marketing, because the biggest sell point is the games available. To get a large library of games, you simply must have a huge install base. The problem being that the average consumer isn't going to buy the most expensive console out there. And where the average consumer goes with console money is where the games will be. ps3 will essentially be a paperweight. a $600 paperweight.
In fact, this is a major reason why I'm no longer excited about the ps3. Yes it looks great. The games announced for it sound good. But when the dust settles on the next console wars, most of the games will have either switched consoles or have gone multi-console because the ps3 is essentially priced out of the reach of most people buying a console. The average consumer walking into best buy or gamestop will see a used Xbox360 for $300, and if they can find any at all, the ps3 is twice that. Wii at $250 is even less. So 90% of the people walking in wanting a ps3 (assuming that in a parralel universe it was reasonable to assume you could find one), will walk out with the competitions console.
So Long, Sony.
I don't see why not, there's been the same in FFXI
The Utopian existence of the Eloi turns out to be deceptive. The Traveller soon discovers that the class structure of his own time has in fact persisted, and the human race has diverged into two branches. The wealthy, leisure classes appear to have evolved into the ineffectual, not very bright Eloi he has already seen; but the downtrodden working classes have evolved into the bestial Morlocks, cannibal hominids resembling albino apes, who toil underground maintaining the machinery that keep the Eloi - their flocks - docile and plentiful. Both species, having adapted to their routines, are of distinctly sub-human intelligence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine
So to play say GT6, you'd buy a car and a track, but because of the way the downloads are made, after a day or two, you'll need to swipe your credit card again if you want to play with the same card on the same track. I've already seen that on a few downloaded cheapy games, sure you can try them, but after a set time, the game locks and becomes useless -- unless you pay. That's going to be mighty painful if you're going to have to pay $10 or $20 every time you boot up XBOX^3 or whatever they'll call it.
First off, you have a lot of copycatting going on. Everybody wants in on the big trend, so they're trying to recreate the big game of the year. There aren't many that aren't essentially clones of some other game. Ico, DDR, Katamari, Okami and Gitar Hero are new games. Most of the rest are pretty generic, to the point where if you've played one game in the genre, the rest are rentals -- because other than the graphic art, they play identically. And that's not even counting the sequels of the generic games.
Secondly, especially for TV/movie games, most franchise games are made with very little understanding of what made the series good to begin with. http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/strategy/startrekl egacy/screenindex.html?part=rss&subj=6152227 This is just one example. I don't know how you could watch a show where 90% of the time, they negotiate their way out of danger and decide that the best thing to make with the franchise is a shooting game. I won't even bother bringing up Anime franchises.
It's a feeding frenzy based on the idea that "rare" is the same as valuable. Same as what happened in St. Louis when they tore down old Busch Stadium. You could buy just about anything -- and people did. I don't know exactly *why* people were paying thousands of dollars for used urinals from old Busch, but I guess they figured that urinals go UP in value once the building they were housed in comes down. And much like this auction, I think the value is highest right now. The grandkids might say "Daddy, what's a Vulcan" and simply not get it. Beanie babies are worth all of about $10 now, even though at the height of popularity, people were paying hundreds of dollars for them.
Well, what I'm suggesting is that even FF13 will probably eventually switch consoles. There simply aren't enough people interested in the ps3 to justify putting Square's flagship title as an exclusive on the ps3. People don't buy consoles for just one game.
And given that SE and any number of other devs need to sell their games, I can't imagine they're going to put their game on a system that has a tiny install base. Even if 10% of their fans would buy ps3 just for FF, that won't be enough for SE to make a profit on. They'll go to where the biggest install base is, which won't be ps3, even in Japan. I think that eventually FF will be on either 360 or Wii.
Even if string theory fails as a theory, it's still an attempt to provide a mathematical model for space, matter, and the various forces. It is falsifiable in the simple sense that if it predicts things that are at odds with known theories and observations, there's a problem that would have to be resolved. If string theory could be falsified in this sense, it would have been dropped long ago. To qualify as scientific, it doesn't actually have to make new predictions, particularly in the realm it's operating in. ID makes absolutely no comparable predictions, other than, as I said, "That's what God wanted".
We're at a point in fundamental theoretical physics were progress is incredibly difficult because of the limitations on our ability to analyze the necessary structures. Those limitations aren't going away any time soon - the next generation of accelerators might help a little, but quite likely not in any major way. For all we know at the moment, it's possible that we'll never discover a better theory of everything than the Standard Model + GR + SR. So does that mean we should stop trying? At this point, one of the best tools we have is mathematics, and that's what ST is exploiting.
ST has some suspicious features: with so many degrees of freedom, and so few ways to experimentally constrain those freedoms, it can be tweaked endlessly to produce the desired results. However, that in itself doesn't mean that there's not a workable theory there. Think of it as exploring a mathematical space, looking for something which fits our universe. In fact, it's not that different from how previous theoretical discoveries were made, except that the mathematics of previous theories was trivial by comparison, so it was much easier to hit on the "right" theory in the space being explored.
You might claim that ST is a bad scientific theory, or a failed scientific theory, but to say that it's comparable with ID shows a serious lack of understanding of the distinction between science and fantasy.
It is true that ST isn't political yet, but really that's about the only difference between String Theory and Intelligent Design. It's faith, and I'm from the Show-Me-State.
To be "highbrow" or a classic, the game must have layers of appreciation. Insert oblig. onion reference here.
1) The action itself
2) References to other things in the pop-culture
3) References to things in current events
4) References to real history
5) A statement about something - even if it is trivial
6) Engaging characters
Start counting how many games have these elements and then you will have a real list.
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Off the top of my head:
Star Ocean: Til the End of time
Final Fantasy IV to VII
StarCraft
Nope, I'd far rather play a great game with decent graphics rather than some "game designer"'s wannabe movie. And I can't imagine that 80% of the gaming market is made up of people who would rather watch a game than play one. Eventually, the graphics will all be photo-realistic, and then there won't be any market for games with no gameplay.
In fact, I think everything that came along since the Roman Era has been the "End of Western Civilization". Kids have always been lazier and less interested in knowledge than privious generations. Evil currupting forces have always pulled them from the Straight and Narrow(TM). Even Christianity, when it first came along was a threat.
Google can do this, and pretty much any company that can set its own time-table can use "Google Agile" methods. But you're limited to just those products where a delay of a few weeks or months isn't a major issue. It's simply not true for every type of software developer out there.
Maybe "Agile" methods aren't the absolute best out there, but there are cases where it's simply not possible to use "Google Agile" methods.