Sure, there are lots of terrible console games. There are lots of console games, and assuming some sort of standard distribution, theoretically it can be assumed that there would be lots of terrible console games.
It would be nice to see some innovation on the PC side that didn't involve having a video card that hasn't been designed yet. One of the advantages of designing a game for a console is that the hardware is known and previous work and efficiency in software coding can be leveraged (obviously works better later in the hardware's life). Rarely have I looked at a PC game in the store that ran awesomely on the machine I already had. Meanwhile, God of War 2 looks better that GOW1 did, and it's the same hardware!
Also, I find it very rare for a PC game to be innovative lately. It happened in the 80's, sure. Now most of what I see on PC these days is some flavor of Doom or Command & Conquer or Civilization. FPS, RTS, or um... Simulation? (Of course, I forgot Evercrack and World of Warcrack. Innovative in that lots of people are paying a subscription for what a bunch of 40 year old guys do in the back of comic book stores for free.) Other that the Sims, I haven't seen much revolutionary gameplay on PC. How about Guitar Hero or Eye Toy or Katamari Damacy or Super Monkey Ball? Where are those games on PC? And no, please don't point me to the open source ripoff of Guitar Hero seeing as it wouldn't have gotten made without GH existing in the first place.
Anyway, it's the beginning of PS3's life, and someone took a risk on a motion control dragon game. I applaud them for taking the risk. I'm disappointed that they had to have Mr. Eggebrecht on EGM Live or 1up disagreeing with their reviewer about the crappy motion control and using the excuse that the casual gamer focus groups didn't hsve a problem with it like the reviewers and even all their play testers did. Using the casuals to justify the crappy control of a game that would appear to be aimed at hardcore games is a fairly lame move.
I'm also fairly sure if he admitted that the controls were junk, the stockholders would set him up for a firing squad. If he delayed the game release to fix the motion control problem, same result. Damage control and excessive spin were his only realistic options. Furthermore, if Sony had genuinely felt that casual gamers were really important, they wouldn't have forced casual gamers out with the excessive price point on the machine in the first place.
Since Sony can't have it both ways, Mr Eggebrecht should then disappear in a puff of logic.
Perhaps Katamari Damacy, or Ico, or Shadow of the Colossus is art. It's a set of images that evoke feelings from me that I both have an emotional and physical response to. Just by watching them, people I know think about both games and art differently.
Even Tetris, from a design standpoint is art in the way that a cleanly designed piece of Jens Risom furniture is art.
Even God of War could be considered art.
Isn't it, like, subjective? Don't movies suffer from the same flaws? When you think of art, do you think of A Room With A View, or Rear Window, or Clerks, or do you think of Uve Boll masterpieces like Alone in The Dark and the House of the Dead and Bloodrayne? If you have a preference, does that invalidate the claim of another that the other group is art?
Tactile feedback is the reason to use it. I wouldn't miss it if it were gone - except in Gran Turismo. They don't call those red & white things on the sides of the tracks rumble strips for nothing.:)
More titles are always good, but they're pretty pointless if the system itself sucks.
Perhaps you forget the lesson from Clerks? Perhaps you missed because Jay intentionally mishandles the line to set up for Silent Bob - but
/Jay/ "What's a good plate with nothin' on it?"
/Dante/ "Meaning?"
Titles are the only reason to play a system at all, and the best system specs in the world don't mean much if there aren't any good titles for it. (3DO, Jaguar, PS3, I'm looking at you...) Moreover, not every title will appeal to every player, so a variety of good titles is necessary to maximize system sellthrough. I play a variety of games that would be labeled as kiddie by many readers here (check my/. name for clues...) so I ended up with a Gamecube and a PS2 last go-round to get the games that I wanted. I also play fighting games a little, and PS2 had plenty to choose from. I couldn't justify an Xbox purchase for the two or three games I wanted for it that I couldn't get elsewhere, no matter how nice the DOA chicks look playing volleyball or how bad I wanted to help the Todd McFarlane legal defense fund. By the way, your beloved PS2? It sold truckloads with GTA3. You were nearly at risk of disproving your own point from your own admissions.
Perhaps if you played Halo, you would think differently about the Xbox, because I don't see how you could have anything approaching that experience on PS2 or Gamecube.
On this go-around, if I have to choose between 90 rehashed $60 sports and FPS games on PS3 and XBox360 or some sweet Twilight Princess action on the Wii, you can bet I'm spending my rupees in the happy Kingdom of Hyrule. Based on system specs, the Wii should be the loser. However, they're selling like hotcakes. See, people don't care if it's just two GameCubes duct taped together. It's a compelling experience because of the games.
Uhh... No. Oddly enough, Sony's the only company that didn't see that title. Conker was developed by Rare, and made fun of their other cutesy platform games, and involved singing poo, drunkenness, movie ripoffs, all manner of death and dismemberment, and was quite a hoot. It was originally on the N64, and then got a less-than-well-received remake (read critical success, but didn't sell boatloads) on XBox after Rare was acquired by Microsoft. I don't think the XBox version was bad, but the feedback I heard was "haven't we played this before?" mostly because I was at the right age group to catch people maturing away from Nintendo via games like CBFD and wanting a more robust multiplayer experience, leaving Nintendo for the XBox. Finding Perfect Dark and Conker after they got there was silly, since they were two of the best games that the N64 had late in its cycle, and there was little reason to play them again once they switched consoles.
I'm sure that there are plenty of people who are widely regarded in their respective fields who are largely unknown to the general public.
Macky (Shotaro Makisumi) or the Mao brothers on Rubik's Cube?
Buckethead on guitar?
Thresh (Dennis Fong) on Quake?
Maurice LaMarche or Billy West for voice acting?
Sure, we might have heard of these people - I assume the last one is a real gimme for the/. crowd - but not everyone has, and I think that's precisely why a documentary about a person like this is interesting. It gives a chance to look at something we would not see otherwise.
Unfortunately, this is also an opportunity for objectivity, perception, editing, and storytelling to step all over each other's toes. I would have to assume the editor and the director think that they have either a) correctly represented Billy Mitchell or b) represented Billy Mitchell in such a way that they will actually sell tickets to a documentary. March of the Penguins? Trekkies & Trekkies 2? I'm sure they aren't the only three documentaries on the last 10 years. Good luck selling tickets to the others though.
Perhaps it's Amerocentric. Home Depot, Office Depot, Target, Wal-Mart all seem to have SKU numbers all over the store shelves and assume that the customers have some sort of familiarity with the idea. Anyone over 50 trying to redeem coupons in one of those stores has had to fight with the employees over exactly which SKU is on sale, and why don't they have any, and so on.
Since the stores often would rather use an identifying number shorter than the EAN (which used to be the UPC) the SKU - usually 5-7 digits - is used.
However, that would not seem to excuse the headline - since that last word s/b SKUs and not Skus IMO. Since the ambiguous headline was under the Game section, it would tend to narrow your mental choices down. Perhaps it would read better as
M$ XBox360 'Elite' is not replacing 'Premium' or 'Core' SKU's
and now it's gotten too long and isn't really a headline anymore. Zonk, I'm not ready to take your job. Assume away.
That's the one thing that Nintendo has had solidly going for it for quite some time now. Once Bomberman on SNES turned into a solid party game, and Nintendo saw the potential of social multiplayer, the multitap went out the window in the next generation. The N64 and the GC - four ports standard. What I appreciated just as much was that the games that are fun to play 4 player - Goldeneye, Mario Kart, Diddy Kong Racing, Bomberman 64 (1&2), Super Monkey Ball (1&2), all have good single player experiences. I guess the only Nintendo game you can't put in that category are the Mario Party games - which I suspect are rather lame by yourself but are big sellers. I'm just hoping that there really are Wii's in the store next week so I can get some Rayman action going.
I suspect that lumping all classical instruments together and pitting them against electric guitars and basses is unfair at best.
I also suspect that given the clean audio conditions that one might hear a classical piano in, that it would be far easier to tell a Fender Telecaster from a Stratocaster from a Gibson Les Paul than you might expect.
Also, given the high number of hobbyist musicians that play guitar (an assumption based on the number of units available for sale in the county I live in), I feel fairly confident that it would be far easier for most people to tell a Strat from a Les Paul from audio alone - even with the same player and brand of strings - than it would be to tell a Fox Renard from a Buffet oboe with the same reed and player (and to know which was which).
Fender and Gibson are a lot more mainstream than Bösendorfer pianos, Bach trumpets, or Selmer anything.
Why don't you guys ask Leon Gruenbaum if you could license his Samchillian http://www.samchillian.com/ technology for a game? That way, people could learn a rather cool and functional instrument that they could access via a regular PC keyboard - Heck, it could be the most rockin' typing tutor ever invented!
You could have a version for PC easily enough. PS2 and XBox have USB keyboards available.
It might make someone into a virtuoso, no?
(P.S. If you fiddle with the Windows version of the Samchillian program - anything older than WinXP gives me Kernel32 errors. It works good on the WinXP machines that I tried it on. Your Results May Vary.)
The one that I purchased from time to time was OPM. Oddly enough, that's the one that got axed just recently. It was nice to get a demo disk once in a while, just to play some things I wouldn't normally buy. Once in a while, there would be a game that I didn't think that was going to be that great that the demo changed my mind on.
I'm sure that now that the PS3 and the Wii are better integrated into the internet like the XBox already was, the demo disk will become useless.
Of course, had they let us burn disks and use them without mods to begin with, they _could_ have used the internet to distribute demos - at least for PS2, anyway. Gamecube might not like a plain ol' CD-R that much.
Subequently, they could quickly alienate console owners on dialup or *gasp* people without any internet at all.
Oh.
Wait.
They're doing that now.
The inherent difference between the price of a postage stamp and the price of a game console is that in the normal consumption of goods and services, a postage stamp would normally be used for postage and possibly never seen again.
If someone saves a postage stamp from the trash, or decides not to use it in the first place, it moves on to life as a collectible and is worth whatever the market will bear. Except in some rare cases (mostly printing errors), you would have to hold onto the thing for years to see it appreciate much.
If some crazed yahoo bought up all the first class stamps (regular, current printing, etc.) in some small town and tried to resell them at $1 each in an attempt to more than double his money, I'm sure the local constabulary would suggest to him that he was gouging, and most of the public could/would wait until more stamps showed up at the post office in a few days.
Correspondingly, a current game console should be sold at the current price, and leave the secondary market to genuinely rare (as opposed to artificially rare) items with limited appeal - a Vectrex, perhaps? That's what _my_ ethics tell me is the right thing is.
Now for the quick reality check - even if everyone that got into line to buy a PS3 was going to play it and none went onto eBay, there would still be some dude somewhere with more money than sense that would wait outside a store on launch day with a big wad of hundred dollar bills. He's not going to feel like camping out the night before, and he'll try to buy one from one of the people walking out with one so his spoiled rotten kid can have one. That way the kid doesn't go into some emotional tailspin involving drugs, alcohol, and Paris Hilton. (My apologies to Criss Angel.) I'm sure, at some point, someone would be offered enough money to take him up on it. So, knowing this will likely happen, the eBay thing seems justifiable to many. Personally, if I went through the hassle of camping out for one, I'd like to actually play it. As it stands now, I'm in to position to camp out and I tend to prefer to wait for the second shipment of anything with a power supply or an internal combustion enginge anymore.
I will wait until the smoke clears to even think about buying one. Even/especially if it's coming from the power supply.
PS5! Now with the new hybrid synergy drive! It uses less than three gallons of biodiesel per day!
I really enjoyed the first Extreme-G for N64. It wasn't a bad game - and a lot of the fog had to do with the N64's ability to render. It did give the game a certain atmosphere. A couple of the tracks later in the game had a decent bit of wow factor left in them, (insane drops, flocks of birds, lava, shiny surfaces) even after being excited about the early levels having cool lens flare effects. Granted, the whole game was clearly derivative of Wipeout, but it had its own charm. It did have a good sense of speed, and the controls were adequately responsive.
I did not like _any_ of the sequels enough to buy them. (I rented the one for PS2 (3? XGRA?), but it wasn't the same.)
If these Canadians can somehow recapture the charm and feel of the original, I'd be interested.
That being said, Acclaim had several titles that were Acc-lame, but most of the really bad ones were rushed-to-market movie games. I assume(pray,hope, etc.) those aren't part of the deal.
A 'regular' PS2 (it's a 30001) says 72W on the nameplate on the back. Correspondingly, the nameplate on the power brick of a slimline says 8.5V, 5.65A. I'm sure someone will accuse me of flamebait if I say that it's around 48 watts, since VA and watts aren't really the same thing.
While I'm at it I also know that a PSOne uses an adapter rated at 7.5V, 2A. Add the LCD screen and you're talking another amp or amp and-a-half at the same voltage.
I'm sorry my post was too subtle. I _thought_ I was pointing out the irony of an aid aired to everyone trying to give individual attention. I can't even afford that car, but the ad reminded me of the "Rock to Wind a String Around" by TMBG and "Satisfaction" by the Stones. I don't actually know/care what Digg is. I'm sorry that my actual experience doesn't match what your actual experience tells you I should feel about a car ad. Thanks for lumping me in with everyone else in/. I didn't think I was up to par with programmers and server admins, anyway. I'll go back to trolling so I don't upset you again. Please get my account deleted at your earliest convenience.
It would be really, really nice if Capcom could redraw some sprites once in a while, though.
Capcom vs SNK 2 has great looking SNK characters becuase Capcom had to redraw them, but their characters were just ripped from
wherever in time the sprites had been drawn last.
Morrigan looks teh suck in CvS2 - but only compared to the other animations. It's not really differnt than the PS1 version of DS3.
Capcom Fighter's Evolution had uneven sprite quality, also.
Oddly enough, I'd still rather play either of those games, or SF3:3, or MvC2.
I guess I didn't get that involved in Guilty Gear's characters. I've been playing SF since SF2 came out for SNES.
I had the first GuiltyGear, liked it, and traded it in when I realized I was playing SF more again.
The other problem is that if 99% of ads were purely informational, the 1% that provoked an emotional response would be the ad that you remembered. All the other ads would be blathering on and on about features and benefits, blah blah...
This other ad said I could hook up with chicks if I bought that sporty car.
That's the ad that you would remember - or at least for a few days.
And of course this works the other way. If all the ads talked about how white my shirts could be, and how so-and-so who's a big,big star smokes the same cigarettes as me, and this NFL quarterback gets his cars from this dealership and you'd be a giant moron not to do the same, and four out of five crackwhores use this laudry detergent because it makes them feel better about themselves and hurts their sinuses less, then an ad that said:
Product X produces result Y. Money Back Gaurantee. Here's a demonstration. Here's a website with hard facts.
Would get your attention.
There are two kinds of ads. Ads that get your attention, and ads that copy the ads that get your attention because some ad executive knows that it's cheaper to copy a good ad than to create an original idea.
I also think that the whole problem with advertising relates to the "If too many people like it, it must suck" mentality. You need an ad that seems different, and feels targeted to every viewer without making the viewer feel like it's also targeted to everyone else.
The new car ad with the megaphones? All the other drivers are blaring out why they drive their exepensive sports cars via some emotional deficiency? Our protagonists throw their megaphone out the window because _they_ are driving an-ego free car.
Doesn't everyone want an ego-free car? You don't want to admit you have some sort of deficiency, do you? Those guys across the quad with the Hummer, they've got problems. You? You don't have problems. This ad is just for _you_.
I'll bet that Sony does include SACD in their Blu-Ray player. I'm sure it's going to be part of their standard firmware. The trick will be getting the average consumer to care.
Since most people seem to be eschewing the Big Black Stereo System behind the Smoky Glass Door with Magnetic Latch these days, and I haven't even seen a 15-band EQ actually being operated in someone's stereo system since the early 90's, I assume that Joe Consumer is listening to a combination of his iPod, car stereo, and cell phone. (Possibly all the same device.)
It's all compressed, and sometimes sounds adequate, especially when the noise floor is high.
Judging by my office, most consumers didn't even know that Q-Sound or HDCD happened and couldn't find the High-Def audio section in a record store with both hands and a flashlight. Judging by my friends, SACD is some crazy audiophile format like Quad or Minidisk. Judging by the internet, I don't want to say what I think most people think DVDA is.
Sure, they can listen to better audio. But will they _listen_?
Of course, the other problem with SACD is that it's one of two competing formats - Stop me if you've heard this one before - and when you have no obvious upgrade path people tend to dawdle and not move forward until a clear winner has been announced.
Maybe we could get Bill Gates and Howard Stringer to put on mawashis and settle the format wars in the ring. Heck, then Bill could raise some more money for his charity while he's at it.
Actually, I find the video resolution terms less jargonful than, say, programming terms. (But, since I don't program, of course I don't understand.)
It starts with a number, which is the number of horizontal lines of resolution.
The i or p indicates Interlaced or Progressive.
Interlaced is like standard-def TV in the states (60Hz). One field of the odd scan lines 1-479, and one field of even lines 2-480. Two fields make a frame, 30 frames a second. Since the phosphor emits light long enough for the second field...
Jules: You know the shows on TV?
Vincent: I don't watch TV.
Jules: Yeah, but, you are aware that there's an invention called television, and on this invention they show shows, right?
Progressive scan is like your monitor. Every line is drawn every time.
Since you're on/. I'll leave Googling 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, and 1080p as an exercise.
Honestly, I don't know if my sarcasm detector is working, or I have to go all the way back to Philo T. Farnsworth here.
Slashdot Mirror
It would be nice to see some innovation on the PC side that didn't involve having a video card that hasn't been designed yet. One of the advantages of designing a game for a console is that the hardware is known and previous work and efficiency in software coding can be leveraged (obviously works better later in the hardware's life). Rarely have I looked at a PC game in the store that ran awesomely on the machine I already had. Meanwhile, God of War 2 looks better that GOW1 did, and it's the same hardware!
Also, I find it very rare for a PC game to be innovative lately. It happened in the 80's, sure. Now most of what I see on PC these days is some flavor of Doom or Command & Conquer or Civilization. FPS, RTS, or um... Simulation? (Of course, I forgot Evercrack and World of Warcrack. Innovative in that lots of people are paying a subscription for what a bunch of 40 year old guys do in the back of comic book stores for free.) Other that the Sims, I haven't seen much revolutionary gameplay on PC. How about Guitar Hero or Eye Toy or Katamari Damacy or Super Monkey Ball? Where are those games on PC? And no, please don't point me to the open source ripoff of Guitar Hero seeing as it wouldn't have gotten made without GH existing in the first place.
Anyway, it's the beginning of PS3's life, and someone took a risk on a motion control dragon game. I applaud them for taking the risk. I'm disappointed that they had to have Mr. Eggebrecht on EGM Live or 1up disagreeing with their reviewer about the crappy motion control and using the excuse that the casual gamer focus groups didn't hsve a problem with it like the reviewers and even all their play testers did. Using the casuals to justify the crappy control of a game that would appear to be aimed at hardcore games is a fairly lame move.
I'm also fairly sure if he admitted that the controls were junk, the stockholders would set him up for a firing squad. If he delayed the game release to fix the motion control problem, same result. Damage control and excessive spin were his only realistic options. Furthermore, if Sony had genuinely felt that casual gamers were really important, they wouldn't have forced casual gamers out with the excessive price point on the machine in the first place.
Since Sony can't have it both ways, Mr Eggebrecht should then disappear in a puff of logic.
Perhaps Katamari Damacy, or Ico, or Shadow of the Colossus is art. It's a set of images that evoke feelings from me that I both have an emotional and physical response to. Just by watching them, people I know think about both games and art differently.
Even Tetris, from a design standpoint is art in the way that a cleanly designed piece of Jens Risom furniture is art.
Even God of War could be considered art.
Isn't it, like, subjective? Don't movies suffer from the same flaws? When you think of art, do you think of A Room With A View, or Rear Window, or Clerks, or do you think of Uve Boll masterpieces like Alone in The Dark and the House of the Dead and Bloodrayne? If you have a preference, does that invalidate the claim of another that the other group is art?
I'm just sayin'.
Tactile feedback is the reason to use it. I wouldn't miss it if it were gone - except in Gran Turismo. They don't call those red & white things on the sides of the tracks rumble strips for nothing. :)
Perhaps you forget the lesson from Clerks? Perhaps you missed because Jay intentionally mishandles the line to set up for Silent Bob - but
/Jay/ "What's a good plate with nothin' on it?"
/Dante/ "Meaning?"
Titles are the only reason to play a system at all, and the best system specs in the world don't mean much if there aren't any good titles for it. (3DO, Jaguar, PS3, I'm looking at you...) Moreover, not every title will appeal to every player, so a variety of good titles is necessary to maximize system sellthrough. I play a variety of games that would be labeled as kiddie by many readers here (check my /. name for clues...) so I ended up with a Gamecube and a PS2 last go-round to get the games that I wanted. I also play fighting games a little, and PS2 had plenty to choose from. I couldn't justify an Xbox purchase for the two or three games I wanted for it that I couldn't get elsewhere, no matter how nice the DOA chicks look playing volleyball or how bad I wanted to help the Todd McFarlane legal defense fund. By the way, your beloved PS2? It sold truckloads with GTA3. You were nearly at risk of disproving your own point from your own admissions.
Perhaps if you played Halo, you would think differently about the Xbox, because I don't see how you could have anything approaching that experience on PS2 or Gamecube.
On this go-around, if I have to choose between 90 rehashed $60 sports and FPS games on PS3 and XBox360 or some sweet Twilight Princess action on the Wii, you can bet I'm spending my rupees in the happy Kingdom of Hyrule. Based on system specs, the Wii should be the loser. However, they're selling like hotcakes. See, people don't care if it's just two GameCubes duct taped together. It's a compelling experience because of the games.
Shop smart. Shop S-Mart.
Ya got that?
Uhh... No. Oddly enough, Sony's the only company that didn't see that title. Conker was developed by Rare, and made fun of their other cutesy platform games, and involved singing poo, drunkenness, movie ripoffs, all manner of death and dismemberment, and was quite a hoot. It was originally on the N64, and then got a less-than-well-received remake (read critical success, but didn't sell boatloads) on XBox after Rare was acquired by Microsoft. I don't think the XBox version was bad, but the feedback I heard was "haven't we played this before?" mostly because I was at the right age group to catch people maturing away from Nintendo via games like CBFD and wanting a more robust multiplayer experience, leaving Nintendo for the XBox. Finding Perfect Dark and Conker after they got there was silly, since they were two of the best games that the N64 had late in its cycle, and there was little reason to play them again once they switched consoles.
Macky (Shotaro Makisumi) or the Mao brothers on Rubik's Cube?
Buckethead on guitar?
Thresh (Dennis Fong) on Quake?
Maurice LaMarche or Billy West for voice acting?
Sure, we might have heard of these people - I assume the last one is a real gimme for the /. crowd - but not everyone has, and I think that's precisely why a documentary about a person like this is interesting. It gives a chance to look at something we would not see otherwise.
Unfortunately, this is also an opportunity for objectivity, perception, editing, and storytelling to step all over each other's toes. I would have to assume the editor and the director think that they have either a) correctly represented Billy Mitchell or b) represented Billy Mitchell in such a way that they will actually sell tickets to a documentary. March of the Penguins? Trekkies & Trekkies 2? I'm sure they aren't the only three documentaries on the last 10 years. Good luck selling tickets to the others though.
Since the stores often would rather use an identifying number shorter than the EAN (which used to be the UPC) the SKU - usually 5-7 digits - is used.
However, that would not seem to excuse the headline - since that last word s/b SKUs and not Skus IMO. Since the ambiguous headline was under the Game section, it would tend to narrow your mental choices down. Perhaps it would read better as
M$ XBox360 'Elite' is not replacing 'Premium' or 'Core' SKU's
and now it's gotten too long and isn't really a headline anymore. Zonk, I'm not ready to take your job. Assume away.
That's the one thing that Nintendo has had solidly going for it for quite some time now. Once Bomberman on SNES turned into a solid party game, and Nintendo saw the potential of social multiplayer, the multitap went out the window in the next generation. The N64 and the GC - four ports standard. What I appreciated just as much was that the games that are fun to play 4 player - Goldeneye, Mario Kart, Diddy Kong Racing, Bomberman 64 (1&2), Super Monkey Ball (1&2), all have good single player experiences. I guess the only Nintendo game you can't put in that category are the Mario Party games - which I suspect are rather lame by yourself but are big sellers. I'm just hoping that there really are Wii's in the store next week so I can get some Rayman action going.
I also suspect that given the clean audio conditions that one might hear a classical piano in, that it would be far easier to tell a Fender Telecaster from a Stratocaster from a Gibson Les Paul than you might expect.
Also, given the high number of hobbyist musicians that play guitar (an assumption based on the number of units available for sale in the county I live in), I feel fairly confident that it would be far easier for most people to tell a Strat from a Les Paul from audio alone - even with the same player and brand of strings - than it would be to tell a Fox Renard from a Buffet oboe with the same reed and player (and to know which was which).
Fender and Gibson are a lot more mainstream than Bösendorfer pianos, Bach trumpets, or Selmer anything.
You could have a version for PC easily enough. PS2 and XBox have USB keyboards available.
It might make someone into a virtuoso, no?
(P.S. If you fiddle with the Windows version of the Samchillian program - anything older than WinXP gives me Kernel32 errors. It works good on the WinXP machines that I tried it on. Your Results May Vary.)
The one that I purchased from time to time was OPM. Oddly enough, that's the one that got axed just recently. It was nice to get a demo disk once in a while, just to play some things I wouldn't normally buy. Once in a while, there would be a game that I didn't think that was going to be that great that the demo changed my mind on. I'm sure that now that the PS3 and the Wii are better integrated into the internet like the XBox already was, the demo disk will become useless. Of course, had they let us burn disks and use them without mods to begin with, they _could_ have used the internet to distribute demos - at least for PS2, anyway. Gamecube might not like a plain ol' CD-R that much. Subequently, they could quickly alienate console owners on dialup or *gasp* people without any internet at all. Oh. Wait. They're doing that now.
The inherent difference between the price of a postage stamp and the price of a game console is that in the normal consumption of goods and services, a postage stamp would normally be used for postage and possibly never seen again.
If someone saves a postage stamp from the trash, or decides not to use it in the first place, it moves on to life as a collectible and is worth whatever the market will bear. Except in some rare cases (mostly printing errors), you would have to hold onto the thing for years to see it appreciate much.
If some crazed yahoo bought up all the first class stamps (regular, current printing, etc.) in some small town and tried to resell them at $1 each in an attempt to more than double his money, I'm sure the local constabulary would suggest to him that he was gouging, and most of the public could/would wait until more stamps showed up at the post office in a few days.
Correspondingly, a current game console should be sold at the current price, and leave the secondary market to genuinely rare (as opposed to artificially rare) items with limited appeal - a Vectrex, perhaps?
That's what _my_ ethics tell me is the right thing is.
Now for the quick reality check - even if everyone that got into line to buy a PS3 was going to play it and none went onto eBay, there would still be some dude somewhere with more money than sense that would wait outside a store on launch day with a big wad of hundred dollar bills. He's not going to feel like camping out the night before, and he'll try to buy one from one of the people walking out with one so his spoiled rotten kid can have one. That way the kid doesn't go into some emotional tailspin involving drugs, alcohol, and Paris Hilton. (My apologies to Criss Angel.) I'm sure, at some point, someone would be offered enough money to take him up on it. So, knowing this will likely happen, the eBay thing seems justifiable to many. Personally, if I went through the hassle of camping out for one, I'd like to actually play it. As it stands now, I'm in to position to camp out and I tend to prefer to wait for the second shipment of anything with a power supply or an internal combustion enginge anymore.
I will wait until the smoke clears to even think about buying one. Even/especially if it's coming from the power supply.
PS5! Now with the new hybrid synergy drive! It uses less than three gallons of biodiesel per day!
I really enjoyed the first Extreme-G for N64. It wasn't a bad game - and a lot of the fog had to do with the N64's ability to render. It did give the game a certain atmosphere. A couple of the tracks later in the game had a decent bit of wow factor left in them, (insane drops, flocks of birds, lava, shiny surfaces) even after being excited about the early levels having cool lens flare effects. Granted, the whole game was clearly derivative of Wipeout, but it had its own charm. It did have a good sense of speed, and the controls were adequately responsive.
I did not like _any_ of the sequels enough to buy them. (I rented the one for PS2 (3? XGRA?), but it wasn't the same.)
If these Canadians can somehow recapture the charm and feel of the original, I'd be interested.
That being said, Acclaim had several titles that were Acc-lame, but most of the really bad ones were rushed-to-market movie games. I assume(pray,hope, etc.) those aren't part of the deal.
A 'regular' PS2 (it's a 30001) says 72W on the nameplate on the back. Correspondingly, the nameplate on the power brick of a slimline says 8.5V, 5.65A. I'm sure someone will accuse me of flamebait if I say that it's around 48 watts, since VA and watts aren't really the same thing.
While I'm at it I also know that a PSOne uses an adapter rated at 7.5V, 2A. Add the LCD screen and you're talking another amp or amp and-a-half at the same voltage.
I'm sorry my post was too subtle. /. I didn't think I was up to par with programmers and server admins, anyway.
I _thought_ I was pointing out the irony of an aid aired to everyone trying to give individual attention.
I can't even afford that car, but the ad reminded me of the "Rock to Wind a String Around" by TMBG and "Satisfaction" by the Stones.
I don't actually know/care what Digg is.
I'm sorry that my actual experience doesn't match what your actual experience tells you I should feel about a car ad.
Thanks for lumping me in with everyone else in
I'll go back to trolling so I don't upset you again.
Please get my account deleted at your earliest convenience.
Thanx and a hat tip,
SMC
It would be really, really nice if Capcom could redraw some sprites once in a while, though. Capcom vs SNK 2 has great looking SNK characters becuase Capcom had to redraw them, but their characters were just ripped from wherever in time the sprites had been drawn last. Morrigan looks teh suck in CvS2 - but only compared to the other animations. It's not really differnt than the PS1 version of DS3. Capcom Fighter's Evolution had uneven sprite quality, also. Oddly enough, I'd still rather play either of those games, or SF3:3, or MvC2. I guess I didn't get that involved in Guilty Gear's characters. I've been playing SF since SF2 came out for SNES. I had the first GuiltyGear, liked it, and traded it in when I realized I was playing SF more again.
The other problem is that if 99% of ads were purely informational, the 1% that provoked an emotional response would be the ad that you remembered. All the other ads would be blathering on and on about features and benefits, blah blah...
This other ad said I could hook up with chicks if I bought that sporty car.
That's the ad that you would remember - or at least for a few days.
And of course this works the other way. If all the ads talked about how white my shirts could be, and how so-and-so who's a big,big star smokes the same cigarettes as me, and this NFL quarterback gets his cars from this dealership and you'd be a giant moron not to do the same, and four out of five crackwhores use this laudry detergent because it makes them feel better about themselves and hurts their sinuses less, then an ad that said:
Product X produces result Y. Money Back Gaurantee. Here's a demonstration. Here's a website with hard facts.
Would get your attention.
There are two kinds of ads. Ads that get your attention, and ads that copy the ads that get your attention because some ad executive knows that it's cheaper to copy a good ad than to create an original idea.
I also think that the whole problem with advertising relates to the "If too many people like it, it must suck" mentality.
You need an ad that seems different, and feels targeted to every viewer without making the viewer feel like it's also targeted to everyone else.
The new car ad with the megaphones? All the other drivers are blaring out why they drive their exepensive sports cars via some emotional deficiency? Our protagonists throw their megaphone out the window because _they_ are driving an-ego free car.
Doesn't everyone want an ego-free car? You don't want to admit you have some sort of deficiency, do you? Those guys across the quad with the Hummer, they've got problems. You? You don't have problems. This ad is just for _you_.
I'll bet that Sony does include SACD in their Blu-Ray player. I'm sure it's going to be part of their standard firmware. The trick will be getting the average consumer to care.
Since most people seem to be eschewing the Big Black Stereo System behind the Smoky Glass Door with Magnetic Latch these days, and I haven't even seen a 15-band EQ actually being operated in someone's stereo system since the early 90's, I assume that Joe Consumer is listening to a combination of his iPod, car stereo, and cell phone. (Possibly all the same device.)
It's all compressed, and sometimes sounds adequate, especially when the noise floor is high.
Judging by my office, most consumers didn't even know that Q-Sound or HDCD happened and couldn't find the High-Def audio section in a record store with both hands and a flashlight.
Judging by my friends, SACD is some crazy audiophile format like Quad or Minidisk.
Judging by the internet, I don't want to say what I think most people think DVDA is.
Sure, they can listen to better audio. But will they _listen_?
Of course, the other problem with SACD is that it's one of two competing formats - Stop me if you've heard this one before - and when you have no obvious upgrade path people tend to dawdle and not move forward until a clear winner has been announced.
Maybe we could get Bill Gates and Howard Stringer to put on mawashis and settle the format wars in the ring. Heck, then Bill could raise some more money for his charity while he's at it.
Actually, I find the video resolution terms less jargonful than, say, programming terms. (But, since I don't program, of course I don't understand.) It starts with a number, which is the number of horizontal lines of resolution. The i or p indicates Interlaced or Progressive. Interlaced is like standard-def TV in the states (60Hz). One field of the odd scan lines 1-479, and one field of even lines 2-480. Two fields make a frame, 30 frames a second. Since the phosphor emits light long enough for the second field... Jules: You know the shows on TV? Vincent: I don't watch TV. Jules: Yeah, but, you are aware that there's an invention called television, and on this invention they show shows, right? Progressive scan is like your monitor. Every line is drawn every time. Since you're on /. I'll leave Googling 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, and 1080p as an exercise.
Honestly, I don't know if my sarcasm detector is working, or I have to go all the way back to Philo T. Farnsworth here.