What about the excuses
1. that cost of DVD/(enjoyment) is way way higher than the cost of booze/(enjoyment) and
2. DVDs are often crippled with DRM an unplayable to would-be customers
3. industry provides no legal mechanism to obtain such enjoyment without extra time and needless money expenditure on middlemen/their wallets/immoral suing of children
Then boycott their products.
Like I've said, I'm no fan of the RIAA/MPAA, or really just bad business tactics in general. I boycott EA games for my own reasons, etc etc. But boycott doesn't mean pirating their wares, it means not *listening to* or *watching* them.
If you object to the practices of your local hardware store, does that justify you breaking in and stealing their products? Hell no. The right thing to do is clearly to lodge complaints (done and done), and stop shopping there, and spread the word. Pirating their products while spouting all your righteous bullshit only reveals that you're merely using it as an excuse, and does a disservice to the actual consumers who are boycotting these products.
Also anyone who refers to college students as "our young people" seems like a politician or MAFIAA-insider to me.
Really. I assure you I'm actually 21, and go to college. What'd you expect me to say "our peeps"? Or maybe I should try on "righteous dudes". Heh. "Our young people" is meant to reach beyond just college students. This mentality I describe pervades high school, and even primary school.
Wine has far from perfect support. Big-name apps like Office and WoW get plenty of love, and incompatibilities are fixed quickly. But for more obscure apps your odds of having it "just work" are not that high. Wine is a tool, not a silver bullet for your WIndows-app-running needs.
Ahhh yes, the "movies suck, I'm not gonna pay for things that suck" argument. If it sucks so damned much don't watch them. Sheesh, you would think that wouldn't be so difficult.
But of course it is, because movies these days are not that bad, and you're just trying to morally justify your pilfering. God, I hate this sense of entitlement people have, and I'm surrounded by it every day. If you don't want to pay for movies, then don't watch them! If you watch them, pay for them! If you have something against studios, then boycott their products by refusing to consume it! Ain't that simple? But no wait, that would involve having some kind of backbone and losing out on some entertainment.
For Slashdot there seems to be an awful lot of Luddites here! I am, of course, referring to GP. 1000 years ago supporting 6+ billion people on this planet with their farming and energy production technology (burning wood anyone?) would have seemed an absurd idea. It is because of our advances in farming technology, industrial production, power generation, among other advances, that we have been able to successfully support the huge number of people on Earth. While energy use can certainly stand to be reduced, there's no reason we have to abandon the crux of our lifestyle. We need to push technology in the right direction to solve our energy and pollution problems, not simply to move into straw huts and sing Kum Bai Ya down by the fire!
Or you do it like every self-respecting university up here in Canada does - I'm sure many of our American brethren do the same. You set up an intranet-only DC++ server. Bam, not accessible (and thus not monitorable) from the outside, and you have insane, insane speeds due to the fact that you're all on the same LAN! A few thousand students in a few thousand dorm rooms and you've got yourself a library of every imaginable file.
Oh come on. You can roll out an online music store that charges a quarter per track with zero DRM, and you still wouldn't make so much as a dent in music piracy. You can also create a fast, instantly-streaming download service for movies at, say, $5 per movie, and you still wouldn't make a dent on BitTorrent traffic. Most people aren't pirating as some form of protest for draconian anti-consumer policies, they pirate because it beats paying money for it.
The vast majority of the world, when it comes to piracy, are cheap bastards. I know guys who pay $2K for a laptop but refuse to pay for a copy of Windows. Where's the logic in that? People are stuck in the mindset that if they cannot hold it in their hands, it must not be worth any money at all. They are vaguely aware of a musician that they're ripping off, but their feeble minds do not permit them to hold onto that train of thought long enough to feel guilt.
Whether or not you have the money to spend on DVDs is irrelevant if you don't buy them to begin with.
Except these people have tens, if not hundreds of movies stored on their hard drives. I know of some outliers who even have thousands. Clearly they consume the media, and the vast majority have paid nothing for it. This isn't the case of the MAFIAA going after people who have no supposed interest in their products, trying to extract money out of them.
I frequently hang around generally don't purchase DVDs or CDs unless it's really something they like
Ah, the old "new stuff is crap, I don't pay for crap" excuse, which is valid so long as I can't catch you with the new Britney Spears album on your disk. If you're serious about only buying stuff you like, then only CONSUME stuff you like. Don't justify your piracy of a movie or album because "it's not worth the $X". For movies especially, there are plenty of avenues to avoid paying full-price, including renting the DVD.
but I do want to make it very clear that the artists/labels and movie companies aren't getting money from a portion of these users whether they pirate the media or not
Except the vast majority of college students aren't on a moral crusade against labels and studios that rip of the actual creative artists. Most students I've discussed this with don't even bother using it as an excuse, much less actually believing it. Like I said, piracy on campus is treated as a victimless crime, not "sticking it to the Man" of any sort.
I am in college, and I've been to the campuses of MANY others, for one reason or another, and while it's true that you've got some college students eking by on savings and loans, being very judicious in their spending, the vast majority are supported by middle-class parents, and have plenty of disposable income.
No, indeed, while I am no fan of the MAFIAA, there IS a very real problem with our young people and their perceptions on copyright. The general consensus is that if they didn't have to filch if off a store shelf, it's morally a-ok, and this mentality pervades every college campus I've ever been to. I'll leave the psychological analysis of the why to people better qualified than I, but it is undeniable that the average college student thinks nothing wrong with piracy. It's perceived as a victimless crime.
Seriously, if you can spend thousands boozing yourself up each year, you can't make the excuse that you're too poor to buy DVDs.
That I think is the crux of the whole situation. No matter how many bags of grain and how many OLPCs we send to these nations, the vast majority will NEVER pull out of their poverty due to corrupt political and social systems. While you're feeding their poor the ruling local warlords are still raping and pillaging, and depending on where you live, as long as the diamond/oil/valuable commodity money keeps flowing, these people will stay in power for as long as they please.
Actually, if you weren't an idiot trolling, you'd realize that the vast majority of foreign researchers in the US are in the country by virtue of the O1 visa, not the H1. This visa requires documentation and proof that the person is a world-renowned expert in their field, possesses world-class skills in the arts or sciences, and in short is nothing short of an absolutely unique and brilliant individual.
Or would you rather leave all those Pakistani, Chinese, and other brilliant scientists in their homelands, helping their repressive regimes?
Count me as another fan - I even ripped the music files into MP3 format (took a lot of work IIRC) way back in the Napster days. Unfortunately I've since lost the files:(
Disagree. While the MGS soundtrack has incredible production values, but it sounds like yet another action movie with political intrigue. After all, all of Harry Gregson-Williams' scores sound about the same, and one can easily confuse his MGS soundtrack from The Rock, or Enemy of the State. He's talented in that it sounds GOOD, but to me it's very generic sounding, and not really worth iPod'ing.
For multiplayer level designers, I'd take a very long look at Call of Duty 4. Where Valve is the king of maps in general, Infinity Ward has a ridiculous way about making use of height, rooftops, and general stacking of levels while maintaining impeccable multiplayer balance and flow.
At 50c a call, that's 240 calls a year to "break even", but of course that's not a valid comparison. A cell phone you have wherever you go, removing the need to hunt aimlessly around a building for one (which is made even more difficult by the fact that they're disappearing gradually). It also permits you to RECEIVE calls, not just make them. Not to mention things like text messages and voicemail that come in very useful - you can't very well leave a message for someone on a payphone.
How much all of the above is worth varies from person to person, but the general consensus within my family is that $120 a year is quite a reasonable price to have a viable line of emergency (or semi-emergency) contact, and also for the occasional convenience sake.
This was a payphone at Union Station in downtown Toronto. I have no idea which one it is - only that my brother (before he got his cell) tried to call me, but only brought 50c in cash, and thus had to run about, buy random crap, just to make change.
People are treating ATT like the scum of the Earth here, which they may be in their mobile business, but I can't see why expecting to break even is such an evil goal.
Pay phones here in Canada are up to $1 a call now, ridiculous, when it was a quarter merely a few years before. The downturn in usage means increased cost per call for the few people that still use them, which drives a cycle that forces everyone to get some sort of cell phone.
Both my brother (an academic) and my mother have pay-as-you-go plans, which cost them about $120 a year. That's really not too bad, considering they're light users. They enjoy the convenience of a cell phone, and also the security from being able to call emergency services wherever they may be, as opposed to having to locate the nearest (dwindling number) payphones.
I simply do not see pay phones as having any further use to our society. They were important pieces of technology from a bygone era, that's all.
In fact, at least here in Canada, I believe those with C averages wouldn't get in, either.
Better check your facts. There are *many* well recognized universities one can get into in Canada with a C average. I know plenty of people who have done just that.
Grades aren't the end-all and be-all of performance indicators. I know a high school dropout who formed his own IT business when he was 16, and then managed to make it into the most prestigious engineering school in Canada by virtue of his accomplishments in the industry.
Denying someone the opportunity to improve themselves simply because they don't adhere to your standardized tests is amongst the dumbest ideas in existence. Ivory tower academic elites have already done enough damage by establishing academics and grades as the silver-bullet measure to intelligence.
The audience for the Core was NEVER somebody who played Assassin's creed. It was for people like my mom who love playing lumen's live online.
My mother also loves playing Uno on my 360 when she gets a chance. Does that mean she'd voluntarily go out and blow $280 on it? Highly, highly doubtful. While I don't doubt there are a few casual gamers out there who WOULD spend $280 just to play Hexic, I strongly believe that the whole product is meant to confuse with pricing, and does not fulfill any significant niche. It's yet another attempt to go "look how cheap we are!" without actually being so.
Er... You completely missed my point. Of *course* I know all about DLC. I'm saying that the XBA (and the Core that came before it), has so little memory (256MB? please) that it essentially eliminates the possibility of using downloadable content. Even the original GRAW map-pack was some 200MB by itself, and savegames for many games can take 5-6MB *each*! Anything less than a real hard drive isn't going to be very useful for the majority of Xbox owners out there.
I'm also saying the memory-starved-ness of the Arcade SKU also gets in the way of proper game patches, not to mention people who may want to play multiplayer - Xbox patches are MANDATORY for multiplay, and without room to store said patches, multiplayer = no-no.
Start reading my post instead of seeing what you want to see. At no point did I say that the lack of HDD is anything but a bad thing, basic reading comprehension helps. I'm on your side godammit. MS needs to get rid of this no-HDD SKU. $350 vs. $400 is plenty fair of a fight between the 360 and PS3, and given the 360's currently vastly superior game library, MS doesn't even really need to compete on specs, but they DO need to ship consoles that consumers can actually play on, as opposed to confusing mom and pop into buying little Johnny an Xbox 360 that they will HAVE to upgrade with a hard drive later.
For the record, I've been very disappointed in our other contenders so far this generation. PS3 can't get a good game released, nevermind being on-time, and even now a year after launch still has basically NO good exclusives, and a handful of excellent games that can also be played *everywhere else*. Likewise, besides Wii Sports and Super Mario Galaxy, there isn't too much that's compelling for the Wii. As I originally thought, the vast majority of Wii games will turn out to be "look ma, I can wave the wand around!" games with little actual gameplay value. Nintendo has been doing well with its first party offerings, and it may please the average *very light* gamer, but for someone into video games it's not a system that truly satisfies. It is, however, an awesome party system, and for that reason alone I may get one (which I suppose proves Nintendo's point, that they don't need a killer game library to make truckloads of money)
I wouldn't be as harsh as to say the upcoming Wii games are rehashes. Perhaps not entirely original, sequels yes, but they're still great fun to play and there's nothing wrong with that.
I do agree though. Sony missed the online boat last gen, while MS dominated it (and still is). Online connectivity is turning out to be *the* hot product in console gaming, and while Sony is making a good effort (but not nearly good enough), it would seem Nintendo isn't even trying.
Nintendo needs to get on this boat. The Wii weather channel and Wii Opera aren't enough, not by a long shot. By the end of this gen I dare say the PSN will be at least a somewhat respectable gaming network, Xbox Live will still reign king, and it's up to Nintendo to decide if they will be competitive in that sector or be left in the dust, to suffer in the next generation.
I agree that it was a dumb move for Sony to remove back compat from the PS3, but in my mind that's nowhere near as bad a fuckup as failing to include a hard drive as standard in the 360. On the one hand it's "you cannot play PS2 games on your shiny new PS3, which has no games!", on the other it's "you can't save more than 10 savegames on this piece of crap, and forget about mandatory patches to play multiplayer!"... One is clearly a lot more critical of an issue than the other.
Target audience? It's hard to imagine a target audience that wouldn't want to save their games or occasionally participate in downloading some light wares (even a couple XBLA games!) off of MS's vaunted (and IMO justifiably so) network.
There's no doubt in my mind that the continued existence of the Core version of the system is nothing but a marketing gimmick by MS, so that they can continued to trot out the horrible crap that is "look, for $20 more you can buy a 360 instead of a Wii! And look how much cheaper we are compared to PS3!".
All it will create is ill will towards the product and the brand. When Joe parent brings home the Core system, thinking he's saved himself $120 without knowing the difference, he will only find out later that without the hard drive the system is absolutely crippled. It's limited to really only playing the games, and saving a FEW savegames onto that 64MB memory card (sold separately!) before it, too, will run out of space. Or heck, how about patches? I recently ran into the "duplicate players" bug in Assassin's Creed, and I'm still waiting on a patch to fix it. As unfortunate as it is that the problem even exists, any players without a large enough storage device to download patches for his games is totally SOL.
Being a 360 fan, and loving the games on the system, I would like to think that the Core has a significant audience out there. But I really do not believe that to be the case. Imagine the PS3 without a hard drive and that's the 360 Core system. Not to mention it hampers developer efforts, since HDD can never really be required. Patching games? Nope. Changing game balance in a patch? Nope. Adding new content like maps, weapons, and player models? Nope, can't do that either.
Slashdot Mirror
1. that cost of DVD/(enjoyment) is way way higher than the cost of booze/(enjoyment) and
2. DVDs are often crippled with DRM an unplayable to would-be customers
3. industry provides no legal mechanism to obtain such enjoyment without extra time and needless money expenditure on middlemen/their wallets/immoral suing of children
Then boycott their products.
Like I've said, I'm no fan of the RIAA/MPAA, or really just bad business tactics in general. I boycott EA games for my own reasons, etc etc. But boycott doesn't mean pirating their wares, it means not *listening to* or *watching* them.
If you object to the practices of your local hardware store, does that justify you breaking in and stealing their products? Hell no. The right thing to do is clearly to lodge complaints (done and done), and stop shopping there, and spread the word. Pirating their products while spouting all your righteous bullshit only reveals that you're merely using it as an excuse, and does a disservice to the actual consumers who are boycotting these products.
Also anyone who refers to college students as "our young people" seems like a politician or MAFIAA-insider to me.Really. I assure you I'm actually 21, and go to college. What'd you expect me to say "our peeps"? Or maybe I should try on "righteous dudes". Heh. "Our young people" is meant to reach beyond just college students. This mentality I describe pervades high school, and even primary school.
Wine has far from perfect support. Big-name apps like Office and WoW get plenty of love, and incompatibilities are fixed quickly. But for more obscure apps your odds of having it "just work" are not that high. Wine is a tool, not a silver bullet for your WIndows-app-running needs.
Ahhh yes, the "movies suck, I'm not gonna pay for things that suck" argument. If it sucks so damned much don't watch them. Sheesh, you would think that wouldn't be so difficult.
But of course it is, because movies these days are not that bad, and you're just trying to morally justify your pilfering. God, I hate this sense of entitlement people have, and I'm surrounded by it every day. If you don't want to pay for movies, then don't watch them! If you watch them, pay for them! If you have something against studios, then boycott their products by refusing to consume it! Ain't that simple? But no wait, that would involve having some kind of backbone and losing out on some entertainment.
For Slashdot there seems to be an awful lot of Luddites here! I am, of course, referring to GP. 1000 years ago supporting 6+ billion people on this planet with their farming and energy production technology (burning wood anyone?) would have seemed an absurd idea. It is because of our advances in farming technology, industrial production, power generation, among other advances, that we have been able to successfully support the huge number of people on Earth. While energy use can certainly stand to be reduced, there's no reason we have to abandon the crux of our lifestyle. We need to push technology in the right direction to solve our energy and pollution problems, not simply to move into straw huts and sing Kum Bai Ya down by the fire!
Or you do it like every self-respecting university up here in Canada does - I'm sure many of our American brethren do the same. You set up an intranet-only DC++ server. Bam, not accessible (and thus not monitorable) from the outside, and you have insane, insane speeds due to the fact that you're all on the same LAN! A few thousand students in a few thousand dorm rooms and you've got yourself a library of every imaginable file.
Oh come on. You can roll out an online music store that charges a quarter per track with zero DRM, and you still wouldn't make so much as a dent in music piracy. You can also create a fast, instantly-streaming download service for movies at, say, $5 per movie, and you still wouldn't make a dent on BitTorrent traffic. Most people aren't pirating as some form of protest for draconian anti-consumer policies, they pirate because it beats paying money for it.
The vast majority of the world, when it comes to piracy, are cheap bastards. I know guys who pay $2K for a laptop but refuse to pay for a copy of Windows. Where's the logic in that? People are stuck in the mindset that if they cannot hold it in their hands, it must not be worth any money at all. They are vaguely aware of a musician that they're ripping off, but their feeble minds do not permit them to hold onto that train of thought long enough to feel guilt.
Except these people have tens, if not hundreds of movies stored on their hard drives. I know of some outliers who even have thousands. Clearly they consume the media, and the vast majority have paid nothing for it. This isn't the case of the MAFIAA going after people who have no supposed interest in their products, trying to extract money out of them.
I frequently hang around generally don't purchase DVDs or CDs unless it's really something they likeAh, the old "new stuff is crap, I don't pay for crap" excuse, which is valid so long as I can't catch you with the new Britney Spears album on your disk. If you're serious about only buying stuff you like, then only CONSUME stuff you like. Don't justify your piracy of a movie or album because "it's not worth the $X". For movies especially, there are plenty of avenues to avoid paying full-price, including renting the DVD.
but I do want to make it very clear that the artists/labels and movie companies aren't getting money from a portion of these users whether they pirate the media or notExcept the vast majority of college students aren't on a moral crusade against labels and studios that rip of the actual creative artists. Most students I've discussed this with don't even bother using it as an excuse, much less actually believing it. Like I said, piracy on campus is treated as a victimless crime, not "sticking it to the Man" of any sort.
I call bullshit wishful thinking.
I am in college, and I've been to the campuses of MANY others, for one reason or another, and while it's true that you've got some college students eking by on savings and loans, being very judicious in their spending, the vast majority are supported by middle-class parents, and have plenty of disposable income.
No, indeed, while I am no fan of the MAFIAA, there IS a very real problem with our young people and their perceptions on copyright. The general consensus is that if they didn't have to filch if off a store shelf, it's morally a-ok, and this mentality pervades every college campus I've ever been to. I'll leave the psychological analysis of the why to people better qualified than I, but it is undeniable that the average college student thinks nothing wrong with piracy. It's perceived as a victimless crime.
Seriously, if you can spend thousands boozing yourself up each year, you can't make the excuse that you're too poor to buy DVDs.
That I think is the crux of the whole situation. No matter how many bags of grain and how many OLPCs we send to these nations, the vast majority will NEVER pull out of their poverty due to corrupt political and social systems. While you're feeding their poor the ruling local warlords are still raping and pillaging, and depending on where you live, as long as the diamond/oil/valuable commodity money keeps flowing, these people will stay in power for as long as they please.
Correction: Criminality favors everyone equally, it's the not-so-bright ones that get caught. Or the not-so-careful.
The smartest criminals make their activities legal: see RIAA, MPAA.
Oh come on, that's like "recognize" and "recognise", they're the same thing, and equally valid depending on where in the world you are.
Actually, if you weren't an idiot trolling, you'd realize that the vast majority of foreign researchers in the US are in the country by virtue of the O1 visa, not the H1. This visa requires documentation and proof that the person is a world-renowned expert in their field, possesses world-class skills in the arts or sciences, and in short is nothing short of an absolutely unique and brilliant individual.
Or would you rather leave all those Pakistani, Chinese, and other brilliant scientists in their homelands, helping their repressive regimes?
Count me as another fan - I even ripped the music files into MP3 format (took a lot of work IIRC) way back in the Napster days. Unfortunately I've since lost the files :(
Disagree. While the MGS soundtrack has incredible production values, but it sounds like yet another action movie with political intrigue. After all, all of Harry Gregson-Williams' scores sound about the same, and one can easily confuse his MGS soundtrack from The Rock, or Enemy of the State. He's talented in that it sounds GOOD, but to me it's very generic sounding, and not really worth iPod'ing.
Lighten up. I don't see anything anti-Taiwanese in that post. Humorless pricks like you give the rest of us Taiwanese a bad name.
For multiplayer level designers, I'd take a very long look at Call of Duty 4. Where Valve is the king of maps in general, Infinity Ward has a ridiculous way about making use of height, rooftops, and general stacking of levels while maintaining impeccable multiplayer balance and flow.
At 50c a call, that's 240 calls a year to "break even", but of course that's not a valid comparison. A cell phone you have wherever you go, removing the need to hunt aimlessly around a building for one (which is made even more difficult by the fact that they're disappearing gradually). It also permits you to RECEIVE calls, not just make them. Not to mention things like text messages and voicemail that come in very useful - you can't very well leave a message for someone on a payphone.
How much all of the above is worth varies from person to person, but the general consensus within my family is that $120 a year is quite a reasonable price to have a viable line of emergency (or semi-emergency) contact, and also for the occasional convenience sake.
This was a payphone at Union Station in downtown Toronto. I have no idea which one it is - only that my brother (before he got his cell) tried to call me, but only brought 50c in cash, and thus had to run about, buy random crap, just to make change.
People are treating ATT like the scum of the Earth here, which they may be in their mobile business, but I can't see why expecting to break even is such an evil goal.
Pay phones here in Canada are up to $1 a call now, ridiculous, when it was a quarter merely a few years before. The downturn in usage means increased cost per call for the few people that still use them, which drives a cycle that forces everyone to get some sort of cell phone.
Both my brother (an academic) and my mother have pay-as-you-go plans, which cost them about $120 a year. That's really not too bad, considering they're light users. They enjoy the convenience of a cell phone, and also the security from being able to call emergency services wherever they may be, as opposed to having to locate the nearest (dwindling number) payphones.
I simply do not see pay phones as having any further use to our society. They were important pieces of technology from a bygone era, that's all.
Better check your facts. There are *many* well recognized universities one can get into in Canada with a C average. I know plenty of people who have done just that.
Grades aren't the end-all and be-all of performance indicators. I know a high school dropout who formed his own IT business when he was 16, and then managed to make it into the most prestigious engineering school in Canada by virtue of his accomplishments in the industry.
Denying someone the opportunity to improve themselves simply because they don't adhere to your standardized tests is amongst the dumbest ideas in existence. Ivory tower academic elites have already done enough damage by establishing academics and grades as the silver-bullet measure to intelligence.
My mother also loves playing Uno on my 360 when she gets a chance. Does that mean she'd voluntarily go out and blow $280 on it? Highly, highly doubtful. While I don't doubt there are a few casual gamers out there who WOULD spend $280 just to play Hexic, I strongly believe that the whole product is meant to confuse with pricing, and does not fulfill any significant niche. It's yet another attempt to go "look how cheap we are!" without actually being so.
Er... You completely missed my point. Of *course* I know all about DLC. I'm saying that the XBA (and the Core that came before it), has so little memory (256MB? please) that it essentially eliminates the possibility of using downloadable content. Even the original GRAW map-pack was some 200MB by itself, and savegames for many games can take 5-6MB *each*! Anything less than a real hard drive isn't going to be very useful for the majority of Xbox owners out there.
I'm also saying the memory-starved-ness of the Arcade SKU also gets in the way of proper game patches, not to mention people who may want to play multiplayer - Xbox patches are MANDATORY for multiplay, and without room to store said patches, multiplayer = no-no.
Start reading my post instead of seeing what you want to see. At no point did I say that the lack of HDD is anything but a bad thing, basic reading comprehension helps. I'm on your side godammit. MS needs to get rid of this no-HDD SKU. $350 vs. $400 is plenty fair of a fight between the 360 and PS3, and given the 360's currently vastly superior game library, MS doesn't even really need to compete on specs, but they DO need to ship consoles that consumers can actually play on, as opposed to confusing mom and pop into buying little Johnny an Xbox 360 that they will HAVE to upgrade with a hard drive later.
For the record, I've been very disappointed in our other contenders so far this generation. PS3 can't get a good game released, nevermind being on-time, and even now a year after launch still has basically NO good exclusives, and a handful of excellent games that can also be played *everywhere else*. Likewise, besides Wii Sports and Super Mario Galaxy, there isn't too much that's compelling for the Wii. As I originally thought, the vast majority of Wii games will turn out to be "look ma, I can wave the wand around!" games with little actual gameplay value. Nintendo has been doing well with its first party offerings, and it may please the average *very light* gamer, but for someone into video games it's not a system that truly satisfies. It is, however, an awesome party system, and for that reason alone I may get one (which I suppose proves Nintendo's point, that they don't need a killer game library to make truckloads of money)
I wouldn't be as harsh as to say the upcoming Wii games are rehashes. Perhaps not entirely original, sequels yes, but they're still great fun to play and there's nothing wrong with that.
I do agree though. Sony missed the online boat last gen, while MS dominated it (and still is). Online connectivity is turning out to be *the* hot product in console gaming, and while Sony is making a good effort (but not nearly good enough), it would seem Nintendo isn't even trying.
Nintendo needs to get on this boat. The Wii weather channel and Wii Opera aren't enough, not by a long shot. By the end of this gen I dare say the PSN will be at least a somewhat respectable gaming network, Xbox Live will still reign king, and it's up to Nintendo to decide if they will be competitive in that sector or be left in the dust, to suffer in the next generation.
I agree that it was a dumb move for Sony to remove back compat from the PS3, but in my mind that's nowhere near as bad a fuckup as failing to include a hard drive as standard in the 360. On the one hand it's "you cannot play PS2 games on your shiny new PS3, which has no games!", on the other it's "you can't save more than 10 savegames on this piece of crap, and forget about mandatory patches to play multiplayer!"... One is clearly a lot more critical of an issue than the other.
Target audience? It's hard to imagine a target audience that wouldn't want to save their games or occasionally participate in downloading some light wares (even a couple XBLA games!) off of MS's vaunted (and IMO justifiably so) network.
There's no doubt in my mind that the continued existence of the Core version of the system is nothing but a marketing gimmick by MS, so that they can continued to trot out the horrible crap that is "look, for $20 more you can buy a 360 instead of a Wii! And look how much cheaper we are compared to PS3!".
All it will create is ill will towards the product and the brand. When Joe parent brings home the Core system, thinking he's saved himself $120 without knowing the difference, he will only find out later that without the hard drive the system is absolutely crippled. It's limited to really only playing the games, and saving a FEW savegames onto that 64MB memory card (sold separately!) before it, too, will run out of space. Or heck, how about patches? I recently ran into the "duplicate players" bug in Assassin's Creed, and I'm still waiting on a patch to fix it. As unfortunate as it is that the problem even exists, any players without a large enough storage device to download patches for his games is totally SOL.
Being a 360 fan, and loving the games on the system, I would like to think that the Core has a significant audience out there. But I really do not believe that to be the case. Imagine the PS3 without a hard drive and that's the 360 Core system. Not to mention it hampers developer efforts, since HDD can never really be required. Patching games? Nope. Changing game balance in a patch? Nope. Adding new content like maps, weapons, and player models? Nope, can't do that either.
Damned vtable overhead...