With the apps most users run, there is not a great deal of difference between 512MB and 2GB, and for some odd reason I've never had a thrashing problem when physical RAM runs out on a Mac as I do on the PC.
And yes, people do webcam. Remember that the core audience for Macs are college students and other such young people, that demographic LIVES off the fucking webcam.:P
You're still thinking like a techy. People don't care about the specs, as long as they reach some magical minimum bar that shifts with time. The average college student (non-techy) or home user won't look at these two products and go "hey, the Dell has more RAM!". No, he will go "wow, the Mac sure is spiffy, and oooooh magnetic power cord!"
Oh, and that laptop cam you buy, not exactly portable eh? Clips onto your screen, all wobbly, and when you want to move that laptop of yours, oops, better take off the camera before you close the lid, and don't forget to unplug the USB cord, which may or may not be tangled up with your mouse cord! This is the type of convenience I'm talking about. You can do the same thing for less than what I spend, but I have an easier and funner time doing it. That is the core of the Mac philosophy. It might be a geek's wet dream to have a rig that does EVERYTHING, and at the same time looking so complex it might just gain sentience at any point... but you're not Apple's market. Apple's market is the average home user.
What I'm asking people to do, and it's hard for us geeks to, is to stop looking at the value of a computer as the sum of its performing parts. As computers move further and further into the lives of Joe Average, it needs to be come appliance-ized, that means it needs to stop being about the specs, and start being all about the experience. Does the Mercedes-Benz C-series give me that much more power than, say, a Chevy Impala? No, but guess which one I'd rather drive?
At the risk of stretching things a bit, that is the fundamental difference between us and the average user. We are the computing equivalent of guys buying Hondas and souping them up till they can outrun Ferraris. But remember that the average user doesn't want that, their idea of luxury revolves around plush leather seats and big hood ornaments. Apple delivers on the latter aesthetic, they make stylish, functional computers that take care of ALL the little details for you at the expense of raw power, and you there is a premium for this. I for one gladly pay it, because honestly, for everyday computing I'm sick of fucking around with Windows.
And someone asked: no, I don't work in marketing, I'm a code monkey like many of you:P
Disclaimer: Yes, I am a Mac fan, so much so that I work for Apple (though I am not involved in any way with the notebooks)
The whole notion of Mac overpriced-ness used to be a real issue, and at the higher-ends of Apple's products still is. Performance-wise the MacBook Pro still offers precious little for what some el-cheapo notebook mfg's are doing for the same price. But have yhou taken a look at the MacBook lately?
Let's step back and evaluate what the average user wants. Tech geeks like us may care about whether we're getting an ATI Mobile X1600 vs. an Intel GMA950, because we actually use that bit of performance, but the vast majority of users do not. Throw the average emailing, IM-ing, music-listening user in front of a MacBook Pro vs. a MacBook vs. the fastest Windows laptop in the west and they can't tell the difference in performance.
What they CAN tell is that:
A) The MacBook has a nifty little camera! Beats clipping a monstrosity haphazardly to the top of your LCD (yes I am aware some PC laptops have it, but the majority of casual user-level laptops still do not)
B) It's so small and simple! I have a Toshiba laptop at home, and even though it technically is about the same size as a MacBook Pro, it doesn't feel that way. When I handle a MacBook Pro, it feels smaller, it feels lighter, it feels overall easier to work with. Why? Because it's a fucking rectangle, whereas my Toshiba has plastic flap, hinges, plugs, trims, and other needless protrusions that make it look like a bad prop from a B-sci-fi movie.
C) It's not tacky. Some manufacturers have taken this hint. I'm rather a fan of Dell's new case designs, but a lot of manufacturers (Toshiba, I'm looking at you... or hell, the high-end Dells still have a lesson to learn) are still working under the whole tackiness routine. No, we don't need any fricking chrome trim. No, we don't need an LED on the front showing me EVERY POSSIBLE THING THE MACHINE IS DOING, etc etc. A lot of users are just dying for something simple, and Mac gives you that.
D) The hardware simply works better. To remove the battery from a MacBook I just turn this little knob, and the battery pops out. To remove said battery from my Toshiba I have to flip this little plastic switch on the bottom (which feels very flimsy btw), and then pull this other switch thingy to release the clamp, and ALSO I have to pull on the battery at the same time. Is it especially difficult? No, but the Mac experience is infinitely better. It's the little things about the hardware that counts: I can check my battery life without turning on the machine, there's no lid latch to break, there's no power cord to kill your motherboard with (it does happen a LOT, I know many people who ripped the power connector assembly right from the mobo just by tripping over the power cord), I don't have to pay an arm and leg to get bluetooth... need I continue?
E) MacOS. The average schmoe is sick and tired of being thrown jargon by Windows. They cope with it, but feel more at home in the more intuitive aspects of OSX. Everything works out of the box, and the UI is never cluttered with inane BS (Windows Media Player, step up). For a personal average user, he/she does not have to install ANYTHING to do the things he/she does everyday (except the office suite, which doesn't come with a Mac). Dialogs are verbed and more understandable, each button's purpose and actions are clearly communicated (do you really know what the "OK" button does in Windows?), so it's all quite simple to understand in comparison to Windows' bloated interface. Hell, I know average non-techies who figured out how to change their resolution in MacOS, when they didn't have a clue how to do it in Windows.
Users are not interested in paying for hardware, then software, then more software. The average user wants a full solution that works right from the get-go. They want to use hardware that they barely have to learn, and OS that looks as good as it runs (WinXP's default theme gives me nightmares), and the hip factor helps too;) Once you roll the "experience" factor in, I would say most Macs are in fact not overpriced. (no defence for the MacBook Pros, they are still quite expensive)
The portal-gun looks like it will only allow 2 portals to exist at once (one leading to the other), so to break a loop you just fire your gun anywhere else, and the first portal created will disappear and be replaced by the new one.
This is why I use allofmp3. No DRM that I'm locked to (and them tightening the noose every other day)
I wouldn't mind if a DRM-free service like allofmp3 was more expensive, I use it out of principle to avoid pirating the music. I would be willing to go with something closer to the iTunes pricing scheme if it weren't so DRM-filled.
How about the notion that they're just out of touch with their demographic? Every time I see an "urban" game (Need for Speed: Most Wanted, I'm looking at yoooooou~) it's always come off as being poser and totally fake. What can you expect? You're getting a bunch of 35 year-old, predominantly-white, middle-class geeks to develop your "hip" urban game!
And NFS:MW wasn't even the worst offender... I can think of many worse...
Not really. In the old days of Q1 and Q2, we could easily render 1280x1024 pixels of blurry textures, low polygon counts, and all sorts of graphics shite (which looked good for their day). This isn't about how many lines you're putting to screen, but rather that these extra lines are exposing inadequacies in your graphics that today's hyper-realism players expect.
That's a gross oversimplification, but I think the idea stands. Where in the HL1 days we could reasonably model a 900-polygon character and texture him in a matter of a week, nowadays with normal mapping, specular mapping, opacity mapping, insane diffuse mapping, developing both a low-polycount and a high-res model... and all that other graphics jazz, it becomes much more labour-intensive to do the same thing (albeit it looks a lot better).
Game dev costs are turning into a game about content development. Code cost is now a much smaller of a game's total dev cost, and nearly all of AAA title's cost is spent on art assets. This is a problem for all developers, particularly smaller independent devs, who are essentially stuck in the low-content arena of puzzle games and mario clones. This isn't to say that area isn't worthy of exploration, but sometimes us indies would like to pump out a nice fun FPS without the rest of the world going "wow that looks like ass"
Totally agreed on the XBLA point, which is why I was very disappointed to hear that the 360 HDD would only be 20GB. C'mon, for an accessory you charge >$100 for, you can't do better than a measly 20GB?
As it is, you cram a few demos, some music, some videos, etc, onto your Xbox and the damned thing's full already. 20GB is woefully inadequate on a system where Microsoft encourages you to go nuts on the downloading. It also denies the possibility to distributing full games via downloads (as opposed to the 25-50MB XBLA limit). I for one was looking forward to distributing 300MB games via Xbox Live, but with HDD space the way it is...
I've always thought it was strange to compare sales numbers for the 360 with other "X months in" numbers for other consoles - but consider this: the Xbox 360 hasn't been through a real Christmas season yet. It was intended to rack up some real numbers (and would've too), but MS suffered from terrible execution and couldn't deliver on the demand. The sales numbers right now mean nothing, it is not the hot console season right now anyway. If the 360 flops *this* coming Christmas season, then there may be some genuine concern for the console's future.
I can give you some credit for the 'nothing worth playing' bit, though it stands to be seen whether or not any of the PS3's powerhouse franchises will be available at-launch. Once Halo 3 rolls out we will see a huge surge in 360 demand (deservedly or not, I wasn't a huge fan of the second game).
As for defect rate, Sony isn't much better off. The Xbox towards the end of its life was pretty rock solid, while I was still hearing about dead DVD drives left right and center with the PS2. This isn't to say the PS3 will be a piece of junk, but one should remember that Sony doesn't exactly have a golden track record either.
And can we stop it with the "$200 for multiplayer" argument already? We don't know if the PS3's online service will be for-pay also, and hell, even if it were, can it offer the excellent experience that Xbox Live gives? I'd pay good money ($5/month isn't much) to have the type of matchmaking abilities Live offers. If Sony can offer that for free, great, they win, but we don't know anything about that, so let's dispense with the Sony fanboy fellatio?
So far, just in casual discussions with friends and colleagues, there is more interest overall for the 360 than the PS3, though in general people are pretty blah about the next-gen thing in general. The only people I know that are still committed to buying the PS3 are the hopeless fanboys and Japanophiles.
I used to be a huge fan of PC Gamer, back when each issue were monolithic tomes of gaming goodness. While I still like the editorials and the better-than-average reviewing, the mag has fallen a long way from its heyday. I remember reading the first preview for Deus Ex on PCG, it was a massive page-turner chock full of tantalizing tidbits. Things like this just don't exist these days. When they say "preview", you can realistically only expect a half-page blurb that's more market-speak than real, actual, previewing.
I haven't owned a handheld since the ancient days of the Game Boy, I was more referring to PC/Mac gaming. Small, downloadable games that can afford to be slightly more complex than a d-pad and two buttons. Business sims, strategy games, etc - all the things that the GBA's format doesn't allow.
I imagine I'd be a much happier gamer if a good game cost $10. I'd imagine developers would be much happier if they could sell games at 1/5th the price of a AAA title, but with budgets far lower than 1/5th of a AAA action game.
I loved Geometry Wars, and even Marble Blast Ultra, both of which are heavily skill-based, and at the same time don't demand 3-hour sittings each time you play.
My post though, I think, was talking about something a tad deeper. I still pick up an SNES emulator and boot up Chrono Trigger. The graphics may be dated, but the gameplay is superb. I would think it's *very* inexpensive to produce Chrono Trigger in this day and age, even with updated (2D) graphics. Where are these games? The ones that resemble hardcore games, but are willing to sacrifice the real-time 3D eyecandy for something somewhat lower-end (nobody says you can't make 2D look GOOD).
No no no no no no no. This is just wishful thinking on the developers' part.
Look at the greater casual game industry in general, which is far older and more mature than what we've seen on the DS thus far. Even after years upon years of casual gaming, the vast majority of users are *still* playing their Bejeweled clone #5758, and *still* doing the Solitaire thing. I have seen *very* few casual gamers get into even slightly more complex games.
IMHO there's a real ache in the industry for casual-hardcore games. Games that reach beyond the mindnumbing luck/repetition of card games and match-3 gameplay, but appeal to real gamers, but at the same time are less time-consuming and can be produced at the budget level. I for one (as both developer and player) am sick of $50 games that are more shiny bumpmaps than gameplay. Where are the games like Darwinia and Gish? Why isn't there a larger market for these guys?
Re:And a moment of Silence for...
on
Five That Fell
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Don't forget Origin, the geniuses who brought us Wing Commander.
And Bullfrog, who made my two favorite games when I was a kid: Theme Park, and later, Theme Hospital. RIP Bullfrog:(
My personal experience is similar. I am in the 18-25 age group at college, and I've noticed over the last two years people have been looking more and more seriously at a Mac. Before it was just "wouldn't it be nice to have something that slick without paying through the nose?", but now with the MacBook I'm seeing *many* people who are actually switching.
Personally I'm getting an iMac. The ATI X1600 may not be the world's greatest video card, but it gets most of the job done. It can play HL2 at native res (1440x900) with details cranked reasonably high, and I'm not hardcore enough of a gamer to want anything more than that. Plus now I can run all my Win32 games:P
Apple is making HUGE leaps and bounds with the style-aware college demographic, and in a few years when these kids start graduating I think we'll see a reflection in industry adoption brought about by this. For the same reason MS hands out free copies of Visual Studio to CS students, Apple getting students addicted to OSX can only be good in the long run.
A lot of posters on Slashdot are entirely missing the point. The Macintosh is not *meant* to appeal to people like us, the nerds, the geeks, the IT guys who love to hack about. The point of a Mac is that it's stylish, runs well, works, and is headache-free (or at least is *supposed to be*). The Mac is meant to appeal to the everyman, including power users who may want some customizability, it is NOT meant to appeal to the hardcore techies.
:: I get better entertainment value from a PC because it supports better quality sound output (true surround support), HD support, true PVR/Media Center capabilities, and of course, Games which is a Billion Dollar industry Apple has soundly ignored.::
1 - Macs do have surround sound support, and when's the last time a shite Dell box had optical audio out?
2 - PVR/Media Center is a dream of the geek. The rest of the world uses TiVo, this is *not* a feature that Apple is concerned with simply because it's a hardcore feature that 99.99% of the Mac-using population will NEVER touch. You're complaining about a Toyota not having a big-block V8.
3 - Games are a legitimate issue, but the primary Mac audience is not very game-heavy. As their market share increases, particularly with college-age students, this will correct itself. Macs are *capable* of running games (very much so in fact), it is simply that the market share and demographics are not encouraging for porting things over, but that is changing.
Being in college right now, I can see the takeover of the Mac proceeding quite rapidly. 4 people close to me have just switched in the last month with the release of the MacBook (the only truly affordable Mac laptop), and many more have entirely forgotten about Dell, Toshiba, Sony, and the like, and are hell-bent on a Mac when their existing PCs expire. Apple may not be gaining large marketshare in the office, or with older folk who are already tied to their PCs, but if you check out the college market, you will find that Apple has been eating it up over the last year or two.
Heck, I'm an engineer (of the mechanical sort), we LOVE our PCs. The fact that any of us are switching is a testament to Apple's marketing of OSX/Macs to the college crowd. As these college kids graduate and move into the workforce, they will bring the Mac marketshare with them.
I know I'm getting a Mac for the parents soon, simply because it's easy to set up, more foolproof than any other OS out there, reasonably secure, more or less immune from viruses and spyware, and my mother enjoys the bouncing bar at the bottom of the screen more than obscure "Start" menus that don't appeal to a non-technical mind.
While I agree that opening of scout leaders to homosexuals will result in a huge loss of money and membership to the organization, that does not make their decision moral or just. IMHO what is economically most viable for them is not the RIGHT thing to do. This to me sounds like "let's not recall the product, it'll cost too much!" type of thinking.
It's a bit dissapointing that your standard Bejeweled and Holdem clones are still apparently dominating the marketplace. Where indie development was said to be a dream of innovation and creativity, it really looks more like yet more connect-4 and royal flushes.
In Canada parking fees and such regulation are a municipal matter - neither the provincial nor federal governments have any place getting muddled in it.
Unfortunately that probably means accounts everywhere. I live in Richmond (a 'burb of Vancouver), and there are quite a few separate municipalities in this area where I regularly park, so I'll probably keep pumping those quarters.
Slashdot Mirror
With the apps most users run, there is not a great deal of difference between 512MB and 2GB, and for some odd reason I've never had a thrashing problem when physical RAM runs out on a Mac as I do on the PC.
And yes, people do webcam. Remember that the core audience for Macs are college students and other such young people, that demographic LIVES off the fucking webcam. :P
You're still thinking like a techy. People don't care about the specs, as long as they reach some magical minimum bar that shifts with time. The average college student (non-techy) or home user won't look at these two products and go "hey, the Dell has more RAM!". No, he will go "wow, the Mac sure is spiffy, and oooooh magnetic power cord!"
Oh, and that laptop cam you buy, not exactly portable eh? Clips onto your screen, all wobbly, and when you want to move that laptop of yours, oops, better take off the camera before you close the lid, and don't forget to unplug the USB cord, which may or may not be tangled up with your mouse cord! This is the type of convenience I'm talking about. You can do the same thing for less than what I spend, but I have an easier and funner time doing it. That is the core of the Mac philosophy. It might be a geek's wet dream to have a rig that does EVERYTHING, and at the same time looking so complex it might just gain sentience at any point... but you're not Apple's market. Apple's market is the average home user.
What I'm asking people to do, and it's hard for us geeks to, is to stop looking at the value of a computer as the sum of its performing parts. As computers move further and further into the lives of Joe Average, it needs to be come appliance-ized, that means it needs to stop being about the specs, and start being all about the experience. Does the Mercedes-Benz C-series give me that much more power than, say, a Chevy Impala? No, but guess which one I'd rather drive?
At the risk of stretching things a bit, that is the fundamental difference between us and the average user. We are the computing equivalent of guys buying Hondas and souping them up till they can outrun Ferraris. But remember that the average user doesn't want that, their idea of luxury revolves around plush leather seats and big hood ornaments. Apple delivers on the latter aesthetic, they make stylish, functional computers that take care of ALL the little details for you at the expense of raw power, and you there is a premium for this. I for one gladly pay it, because honestly, for everyday computing I'm sick of fucking around with Windows.
And someone asked: no, I don't work in marketing, I'm a code monkey like many of you :P
Disclaimer: Yes, I am a Mac fan, so much so that I work for Apple (though I am not involved in any way with the notebooks)
The whole notion of Mac overpriced-ness used to be a real issue, and at the higher-ends of Apple's products still is. Performance-wise the MacBook Pro still offers precious little for what some el-cheapo notebook mfg's are doing for the same price. But have yhou taken a look at the MacBook lately?
Let's step back and evaluate what the average user wants. Tech geeks like us may care about whether we're getting an ATI Mobile X1600 vs. an Intel GMA950, because we actually use that bit of performance, but the vast majority of users do not. Throw the average emailing, IM-ing, music-listening user in front of a MacBook Pro vs. a MacBook vs. the fastest Windows laptop in the west and they can't tell the difference in performance.
What they CAN tell is that:
A) The MacBook has a nifty little camera! Beats clipping a monstrosity haphazardly to the top of your LCD (yes I am aware some PC laptops have it, but the majority of casual user-level laptops still do not)
B) It's so small and simple! I have a Toshiba laptop at home, and even though it technically is about the same size as a MacBook Pro, it doesn't feel that way. When I handle a MacBook Pro, it feels smaller, it feels lighter, it feels overall easier to work with. Why? Because it's a fucking rectangle, whereas my Toshiba has plastic flap, hinges, plugs, trims, and other needless protrusions that make it look like a bad prop from a B-sci-fi movie.
C) It's not tacky. Some manufacturers have taken this hint. I'm rather a fan of Dell's new case designs, but a lot of manufacturers (Toshiba, I'm looking at you... or hell, the high-end Dells still have a lesson to learn) are still working under the whole tackiness routine. No, we don't need any fricking chrome trim. No, we don't need an LED on the front showing me EVERY POSSIBLE THING THE MACHINE IS DOING, etc etc. A lot of users are just dying for something simple, and Mac gives you that.
D) The hardware simply works better. To remove the battery from a MacBook I just turn this little knob, and the battery pops out. To remove said battery from my Toshiba I have to flip this little plastic switch on the bottom (which feels very flimsy btw), and then pull this other switch thingy to release the clamp, and ALSO I have to pull on the battery at the same time. Is it especially difficult? No, but the Mac experience is infinitely better. It's the little things about the hardware that counts: I can check my battery life without turning on the machine, there's no lid latch to break, there's no power cord to kill your motherboard with (it does happen a LOT, I know many people who ripped the power connector assembly right from the mobo just by tripping over the power cord), I don't have to pay an arm and leg to get bluetooth... need I continue?
E) MacOS. The average schmoe is sick and tired of being thrown jargon by Windows. They cope with it, but feel more at home in the more intuitive aspects of OSX. Everything works out of the box, and the UI is never cluttered with inane BS (Windows Media Player, step up). For a personal average user, he/she does not have to install ANYTHING to do the things he/she does everyday (except the office suite, which doesn't come with a Mac). Dialogs are verbed and more understandable, each button's purpose and actions are clearly communicated (do you really know what the "OK" button does in Windows?), so it's all quite simple to understand in comparison to Windows' bloated interface. Hell, I know average non-techies who figured out how to change their resolution in MacOS, when they didn't have a clue how to do it in Windows.
Users are not interested in paying for hardware, then software, then more software. The average user wants a full solution that works right from the get-go. They want to use hardware that they barely have to learn, and OS that looks as good as it runs (WinXP's default theme gives me nightmares), and the hip factor helps too ;) Once you roll the "experience" factor in, I would say most Macs are in fact not overpriced. (no defence for the MacBook Pros, they are still quite expensive)
The same way we fixed the last tyrannical government: civil war and a "reboot" of the system.
Much like Windows, democracy and freedom must be reformatted from time to time.
I'm betting AMD will change their name to ARM, and we'll all have to hunker down for a very looooooong war.
If Intel names something Core Prime, I'm going to flip.
Looks like Naquadah to me...
From the video the solution is quite simple.
The portal-gun looks like it will only allow 2 portals to exist at once (one leading to the other), so to break a loop you just fire your gun anywhere else, and the first portal created will disappear and be replaced by the new one.
This is why I use allofmp3. No DRM that I'm locked to (and them tightening the noose every other day)
I wouldn't mind if a DRM-free service like allofmp3 was more expensive, I use it out of principle to avoid pirating the music. I would be willing to go with something closer to the iTunes pricing scheme if it weren't so DRM-filled.
How about the notion that they're just out of touch with their demographic? Every time I see an "urban" game (Need for Speed: Most Wanted, I'm looking at yoooooou~) it's always come off as being poser and totally fake. What can you expect? You're getting a bunch of 35 year-old, predominantly-white, middle-class geeks to develop your "hip" urban game!
And NFS:MW wasn't even the worst offender... I can think of many worse...
Not really. In the old days of Q1 and Q2, we could easily render 1280x1024 pixels of blurry textures, low polygon counts, and all sorts of graphics shite (which looked good for their day). This isn't about how many lines you're putting to screen, but rather that these extra lines are exposing inadequacies in your graphics that today's hyper-realism players expect.
That's a gross oversimplification, but I think the idea stands. Where in the HL1 days we could reasonably model a 900-polygon character and texture him in a matter of a week, nowadays with normal mapping, specular mapping, opacity mapping, insane diffuse mapping, developing both a low-polycount and a high-res model... and all that other graphics jazz, it becomes much more labour-intensive to do the same thing (albeit it looks a lot better).
Game dev costs are turning into a game about content development. Code cost is now a much smaller of a game's total dev cost, and nearly all of AAA title's cost is spent on art assets. This is a problem for all developers, particularly smaller independent devs, who are essentially stuck in the low-content arena of puzzle games and mario clones. This isn't to say that area isn't worthy of exploration, but sometimes us indies would like to pump out a nice fun FPS without the rest of the world going "wow that looks like ass"
Ironic? I find it more inspiring that such a diverse range of people can communicate about the same thing, and that this truly is a global age.
Totally agreed on the XBLA point, which is why I was very disappointed to hear that the 360 HDD would only be 20GB. C'mon, for an accessory you charge >$100 for, you can't do better than a measly 20GB? As it is, you cram a few demos, some music, some videos, etc, onto your Xbox and the damned thing's full already. 20GB is woefully inadequate on a system where Microsoft encourages you to go nuts on the downloading. It also denies the possibility to distributing full games via downloads (as opposed to the 25-50MB XBLA limit). I for one was looking forward to distributing 300MB games via Xbox Live, but with HDD space the way it is...
I've always thought it was strange to compare sales numbers for the 360 with other "X months in" numbers for other consoles - but consider this: the Xbox 360 hasn't been through a real Christmas season yet. It was intended to rack up some real numbers (and would've too), but MS suffered from terrible execution and couldn't deliver on the demand. The sales numbers right now mean nothing, it is not the hot console season right now anyway. If the 360 flops *this* coming Christmas season, then there may be some genuine concern for the console's future.
I can give you some credit for the 'nothing worth playing' bit, though it stands to be seen whether or not any of the PS3's powerhouse franchises will be available at-launch. Once Halo 3 rolls out we will see a huge surge in 360 demand (deservedly or not, I wasn't a huge fan of the second game).
As for defect rate, Sony isn't much better off. The Xbox towards the end of its life was pretty rock solid, while I was still hearing about dead DVD drives left right and center with the PS2. This isn't to say the PS3 will be a piece of junk, but one should remember that Sony doesn't exactly have a golden track record either.
And can we stop it with the "$200 for multiplayer" argument already? We don't know if the PS3's online service will be for-pay also, and hell, even if it were, can it offer the excellent experience that Xbox Live gives? I'd pay good money ($5/month isn't much) to have the type of matchmaking abilities Live offers. If Sony can offer that for free, great, they win, but we don't know anything about that, so let's dispense with the Sony fanboy fellatio?
So far, just in casual discussions with friends and colleagues, there is more interest overall for the 360 than the PS3, though in general people are pretty blah about the next-gen thing in general. The only people I know that are still committed to buying the PS3 are the hopeless fanboys and Japanophiles.
... it's not stealing, it's copyright infringement!
Sorry, couldn't resist.
I used to be a huge fan of PC Gamer, back when each issue were monolithic tomes of gaming goodness. While I still like the editorials and the better-than-average reviewing, the mag has fallen a long way from its heyday. I remember reading the first preview for Deus Ex on PCG, it was a massive page-turner chock full of tantalizing tidbits. Things like this just don't exist these days. When they say "preview", you can realistically only expect a half-page blurb that's more market-speak than real, actual, previewing.
... welcome their doomed attempt to challenge the Supreme Court on this issue. Bring it on.
I haven't owned a handheld since the ancient days of the Game Boy, I was more referring to PC/Mac gaming. Small, downloadable games that can afford to be slightly more complex than a d-pad and two buttons. Business sims, strategy games, etc - all the things that the GBA's format doesn't allow.
I imagine I'd be a much happier gamer if a good game cost $10. I'd imagine developers would be much happier if they could sell games at 1/5th the price of a AAA title, but with budgets far lower than 1/5th of a AAA action game.
I loved Geometry Wars, and even Marble Blast Ultra, both of which are heavily skill-based, and at the same time don't demand 3-hour sittings each time you play. My post though, I think, was talking about something a tad deeper. I still pick up an SNES emulator and boot up Chrono Trigger. The graphics may be dated, but the gameplay is superb. I would think it's *very* inexpensive to produce Chrono Trigger in this day and age, even with updated (2D) graphics. Where are these games? The ones that resemble hardcore games, but are willing to sacrifice the real-time 3D eyecandy for something somewhat lower-end (nobody says you can't make 2D look GOOD).
No no no no no no no. This is just wishful thinking on the developers' part.
Look at the greater casual game industry in general, which is far older and more mature than what we've seen on the DS thus far. Even after years upon years of casual gaming, the vast majority of users are *still* playing their Bejeweled clone #5758, and *still* doing the Solitaire thing. I have seen *very* few casual gamers get into even slightly more complex games.
IMHO there's a real ache in the industry for casual-hardcore games. Games that reach beyond the mindnumbing luck/repetition of card games and match-3 gameplay, but appeal to real gamers, but at the same time are less time-consuming and can be produced at the budget level. I for one (as both developer and player) am sick of $50 games that are more shiny bumpmaps than gameplay. Where are the games like Darwinia and Gish? Why isn't there a larger market for these guys?
Don't forget Origin, the geniuses who brought us Wing Commander.
And Bullfrog, who made my two favorite games when I was a kid: Theme Park, and later, Theme Hospital. RIP Bullfrog :(
My personal experience is similar. I am in the 18-25 age group at college, and I've noticed over the last two years people have been looking more and more seriously at a Mac. Before it was just "wouldn't it be nice to have something that slick without paying through the nose?", but now with the MacBook I'm seeing *many* people who are actually switching.
Personally I'm getting an iMac. The ATI X1600 may not be the world's greatest video card, but it gets most of the job done. It can play HL2 at native res (1440x900) with details cranked reasonably high, and I'm not hardcore enough of a gamer to want anything more than that. Plus now I can run all my Win32 games :P
Apple is making HUGE leaps and bounds with the style-aware college demographic, and in a few years when these kids start graduating I think we'll see a reflection in industry adoption brought about by this. For the same reason MS hands out free copies of Visual Studio to CS students, Apple getting students addicted to OSX can only be good in the long run.
A lot of posters on Slashdot are entirely missing the point. The Macintosh is not *meant* to appeal to people like us, the nerds, the geeks, the IT guys who love to hack about. The point of a Mac is that it's stylish, runs well, works, and is headache-free (or at least is *supposed to be*). The Mac is meant to appeal to the everyman, including power users who may want some customizability, it is NOT meant to appeal to the hardcore techies.
:: I get better entertainment value from a PC because it supports better quality sound output (true surround support), HD support, true PVR/Media Center capabilities, and of course, Games which is a Billion Dollar industry Apple has soundly ignored. ::
1 - Macs do have surround sound support, and when's the last time a shite Dell box had optical audio out?
2 - PVR/Media Center is a dream of the geek. The rest of the world uses TiVo, this is *not* a feature that Apple is concerned with simply because it's a hardcore feature that 99.99% of the Mac-using population will NEVER touch. You're complaining about a Toyota not having a big-block V8.
3 - Games are a legitimate issue, but the primary Mac audience is not very game-heavy. As their market share increases, particularly with college-age students, this will correct itself. Macs are *capable* of running games (very much so in fact), it is simply that the market share and demographics are not encouraging for porting things over, but that is changing.
Being in college right now, I can see the takeover of the Mac proceeding quite rapidly. 4 people close to me have just switched in the last month with the release of the MacBook (the only truly affordable Mac laptop), and many more have entirely forgotten about Dell, Toshiba, Sony, and the like, and are hell-bent on a Mac when their existing PCs expire. Apple may not be gaining large marketshare in the office, or with older folk who are already tied to their PCs, but if you check out the college market, you will find that Apple has been eating it up over the last year or two.
Heck, I'm an engineer (of the mechanical sort), we LOVE our PCs. The fact that any of us are switching is a testament to Apple's marketing of OSX/Macs to the college crowd. As these college kids graduate and move into the workforce, they will bring the Mac marketshare with them.
I know I'm getting a Mac for the parents soon, simply because it's easy to set up, more foolproof than any other OS out there, reasonably secure, more or less immune from viruses and spyware, and my mother enjoys the bouncing bar at the bottom of the screen more than obscure "Start" menus that don't appeal to a non-technical mind.
While I agree that opening of scout leaders to homosexuals will result in a huge loss of money and membership to the organization, that does not make their decision moral or just. IMHO what is economically most viable for them is not the RIGHT thing to do. This to me sounds like "let's not recall the product, it'll cost too much!" type of thinking.
It's a bit dissapointing that your standard Bejeweled and Holdem clones are still apparently dominating the marketplace. Where indie development was said to be a dream of innovation and creativity, it really looks more like yet more connect-4 and royal flushes.
In Canada parking fees and such regulation are a municipal matter - neither the provincial nor federal governments have any place getting muddled in it. Unfortunately that probably means accounts everywhere. I live in Richmond (a 'burb of Vancouver), and there are quite a few separate municipalities in this area where I regularly park, so I'll probably keep pumping those quarters.