I'll be honest, I never understood why Google keeps pushing ChromeOS. The 2 devices where "It needs to be connected to a network in order to be useful at all" (Phone and TV) they decided to go with Android so really why bother ? It's like someone high up in Google is stuck in the 1970's/ 80's mainframe mentality where client hardware is weak and expensive and connectivity to the server is cheap, when in fact we live in the opposite world of that.
Without some very clever thinking(or a greater acceptance among tablet users of peripherals), that is going to be a brutal UI problem...
Even between PC and console, which are practically cousins in the 'lots of buttons and a pointing device' family of interface devices, you can smell a console port a mile away because of how wrong its interface feels.... UI arrangements that use a tablet as a second screen for various purposes; but building a control scheme that ports between a console or a PC and a tablet would be quite a feat.
Or you can just make a fully functional/ independent Android version of the Wii U Tablet. If it ran Steam and cloud synced then it could really be awesome. It doesn't have to run high end games to be valuable either. If anything CAN run on a tablet / netbook and has a Steam version of it, this would be a very attractive device.
My house connection can't handle the retarded protocols with 8 computers going at it even with a 75mbit connection just due to the latency increases. My internal LAN doesn't even bat an eyelash at it though.
This is silly. I have a variable (cable) 10-20mbps connection and have often had 5 players playing starcraft 2 without any issues. Likely you have something wrong with your router or some other part of your infrastructure.
and here I am with a rural house that caps at 3mbps down and 256k up... I also enjoy LAN parties and have a Gigabit switch in my house, so SC2 was never a consideration, but SC1 still gets a crap-ton of play.
Yes but a lot of those GOG games have things like MP removed. And because of how they are reworked, are not compatible with, say, the CD version.
Most of the time it's the "online multiplayer" that doesn't work due to no servers being there, but LAN usually works. Also if there version isn't compatable with the CD version what's to prevent you from installing another copy of their DRM free game locally to play LAN ? There's only a few games I saw there that have a CD key or something that identifies it as an identical copy.
The always on connection is nothing more than DRM in disguise. If the pirates hadn't been so keen to rip every game they could get their grubby little hands on this sort of nonsense probably wouldn't have happened.
Yes I know, the truth hurts. But if you're a company thats spent 10s if not 100s of millions on developing a game you're no longer going to watch that investment go down the toilet via a DVD bit copier. They figure that since most gamers now have always on broadband the inconvenience is minimal. Except when they fuck up like this of course.
Piracy isn't the issue here, EA is making it this way so when they shut down the servers in 3-ish years you can't play the game and they can move you onto SimCity6. They already killed the "used game market" for PC games and now they are moving to the "software as a service" model so they can remove games you bought to entice you with a new one. I for one won't be renting games from them, I'll go back to playing SimCity 2000 or SimCity 4 instead.
for what you'd pay in electricity and labor in just a short order, you could make up for by buying higher-quality cheap LCDs...a quick scan at amazon shows there are new and refurbished lcds for $50. There's very little use for a CRT.
Some of us (Arcade collectors) prefer to keep things as original as possible and still repair / cap CRT's to maintain that. Sure LCD's may be cheaper or more energy efficient, but it's like an old muscle car that gets 6 MPG, you know what you're getting when you buy it and would rather keep it original.
Those were interesting times - I remember thinking how dumb it was to expect me to buy a hdtv, now you can't even get regular tv's anymore:)
If you really want a CRT you can get them 2nd hand pretty cheap. I was dropping off some clothes at the Salvation Army by me and they had a sign saying "No longer accepting CRT TVs" as they had WAY too many of them. They ranged from $10-$50 for a big one and all were being sold as is.
Nothing but crap in there. You're basically buying the console for CoD2 and PGR3, and these were the best titles on the system for quite a while! But the system matured and became good over time. This is a non-story really.
Remember when people talked a crap ton about Geometry wars ? sure it's a fine game, but the reason it go so hyped up and people were even discussing it is because there was nothing else to play.
So like I said pathetically slow. Would it have killed them to do an internal bay like the PS3? That way you can even connect at SATA speeds. Hell they could have at least used esata.
The PS3 ship with 2x BD-ROM, it has a throughput of 72Mbps, the 360 ships with a 12x DVD-ROM and has a throughput of 132Mbps... USB 2.0 specification is 480 Mbps, so even though it's not esata fast it's by no means slow.
For me it isn't about price but the lack of "tent pole games" available. When the Wii launched you had Zelda, Wii Sports, Metroid Prime 3, Wario Ware, Mario Kart... like every 3 or 4 months there was a major Nintendo release and the Virtual console in the middle to fill the gaps in between. I love Nintendo games and I will eventually get a Wii U once their first party games drop (hopefully a new Metroid and F-Zero in particular), but currently I'm given the choice of "buy a system and wait for the games to play on it" or "Buy a system when the games I want to play on it are available" and I'm going for the latter. Whether that's this year, this Christmas, next year... that's kinda up to Nintendo but I need 3 compelling exclusive (or Best versions) of games on the system for me to buy it and I just don't see that yet.
To be fair I thought the same thing for the first year of the 360 and the first 2 for the PS3... I'll gladly buy a Wii U for what they're asking, but I need the games too.
a locked down box you plug into the living room TV, requiring the consent of the entire household to do so, to play games is really going out of the window.
I think that's why they went with the gamepad and the second screen option. Gabe from Penny arcade said he'll buy every game that supports that for Wii U over anything else because he doesn't have to stop playing if the family takes over the main TV... he can stream it to the gamepad and keep going.
I thought arcades died in the 80's. Only thing I've ever seen that resembles an arcade are those little nooks in malls and movie theaters. Even then the only thing i notice are those damn DDR machines with their flashing lights and techno music.
If you see a small arcade out there at a movie theater you'll likely find "redemption games", Shooting Games, Racing Games and or DDR. Those are the last hold outs that most people will drop quarters in.
My concern is primarily compatibility. We've got a good sized collection of games -- far more dollars invested there than in the consoles -- and if the new hotness won't play them, it's not coming to my shelves.
My #1 deal breaker for the next X-box is Rock Band; If I can't seamlessly port over everything then it's simply not a consideration. I have far too much wrapped up into it and it's ecosystem and if it doesn't work on the new shiny I'll probably pass.
Any word on having the Half Life / Portal / Left 4 Dead games working on Linux? These are part of my "must have installed" games, that I go back to from time to time, so I'll need them working on Linux as well, thank you:)
They are being ported to Linux. Team Fortress 2 is already there, and they talk about getting better framerates in L4D2 specifically in their blog though it isn't released yet. I don't remember seeing a comment that they are porting all of them, but I think anything that runs the Source Engine is a safe bet.
It's a fully customizable (since the code's been released) Quake 3 with user created skins. Sure there's lots of skimpy dressed / naked avatars, but play with some of the modest ones and there's no reason this wouldn't be M or T rated.
I'm in much the same boat looking for a game both my girlfriend and I would enjoy. She's open to the idea of it, we just haven't found a multiplayer game we're both into (although there are a lot of single player games we both enjoy, especially the Sim- and Sims series).
Find out what she likes and (more importantly what she) doesn't like about games. My fiance HATES twich games that take very fast reflexes and quick decisions like fighting games, so I started her out with turn based games and branched out from there.
No male I know that has younger kids and an 'equal' marriage has time for video games.
Then I'm happy to be your first, please to meet you! My fiance and I work full time and have a 5 year old in Kindergarten yet I still game. Sure it's changed a bit since I was single... I can't play Skyrim or Zelda anymore (as much as I want to) because I seldom get blocks of hours of free time needed to enjoy them. In general my game time comes after they are both asleep and instead of the big sweeping epics I play a lot of "Arcade style games". By "Arcade" I mean quick pick up and play games that I can play 20-30 minutes of and be completely content with.
There's also the games we like to play WITH eachother. She isn't a gamer by any stretch, but the 3 of us enjoy Wii Party, Wii Sports Resort... stuff like that. We also play board games together as a family activity. So sure... I still game regularly, but it's just different is all.
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I'll be honest, I never understood why Google keeps pushing ChromeOS. The 2 devices where "It needs to be connected to a network in order to be useful at all" (Phone and TV) they decided to go with Android so really why bother ? It's like someone high up in Google is stuck in the 1970's/ 80's mainframe mentality where client hardware is weak and expensive and connectivity to the server is cheap, when in fact we live in the opposite world of that.
I wonder if Clippy helped at all with it.
Without some very clever thinking(or a greater acceptance among tablet users of peripherals), that is going to be a brutal UI problem...
Even between PC and console, which are practically cousins in the 'lots of buttons and a pointing device' family of interface devices, you can smell a console port a mile away because of how wrong its interface feels.... UI arrangements that use a tablet as a second screen for various purposes; but building a control scheme that ports between a console or a PC and a tablet would be quite a feat.
Or you can just make a fully functional/ independent Android version of the Wii U Tablet. If it ran Steam and cloud synced then it could really be awesome. It doesn't have to run high end games to be valuable either. If anything CAN run on a tablet / netbook and has a Steam version of it, this would be a very attractive device.
My house connection can't handle the retarded protocols with 8 computers going at it even with a 75mbit connection just due to the latency increases. My internal LAN doesn't even bat an eyelash at it though.
This is silly. I have a variable (cable) 10-20mbps connection and have often had 5 players playing starcraft 2 without any issues. Likely you have something wrong with your router or some other part of your infrastructure.
and here I am with a rural house that caps at 3mbps down and 256k up... I also enjoy LAN parties and have a Gigabit switch in my house, so SC2 was never a consideration, but SC1 still gets a crap-ton of play.
Yes but a lot of those GOG games have things like MP removed. And because of how they are reworked, are not compatible with, say, the CD version.
Most of the time it's the "online multiplayer" that doesn't work due to no servers being there, but LAN usually works. Also if there version isn't compatable with the CD version what's to prevent you from installing another copy of their DRM free game locally to play LAN ? There's only a few games I saw there that have a CD key or something that identifies it as an identical copy.
The always on connection is nothing more than DRM in disguise. If the pirates hadn't been so keen to rip every game they could get their grubby little hands on this sort of nonsense probably wouldn't have happened.
Yes I know, the truth hurts. But if you're a company thats spent 10s if not 100s of millions on developing a game you're no longer going to watch that investment go down the toilet via a DVD bit copier. They figure that since most gamers now have always on broadband the inconvenience is minimal. Except when they fuck up like this of course.
Piracy isn't the issue here, EA is making it this way so when they shut down the servers in 3-ish years you can't play the game and they can move you onto SimCity6. They already killed the "used game market" for PC games and now they are moving to the "software as a service" model so they can remove games you bought to entice you with a new one. I for one won't be renting games from them, I'll go back to playing SimCity 2000 or SimCity 4 instead.
Besides, a light gun will *not* work on anything else than a CRT
Correct!
Personally I'd take about 8 or so Pentium 4's if they have it and store them in a closet just so I can set up a Gog Lan party whenever I want.
for what you'd pay in electricity and labor in just a short order, you could make up for by buying higher-quality cheap LCDs...a quick scan at amazon shows there are new and refurbished lcds for $50. There's very little use for a CRT.
Some of us (Arcade collectors) prefer to keep things as original as possible and still repair / cap CRT's to maintain that. Sure LCD's may be cheaper or more energy efficient, but it's like an old muscle car that gets 6 MPG, you know what you're getting when you buy it and would rather keep it original.
Those were interesting times - I remember thinking how dumb it was to expect me to buy a hdtv, now you can't even get regular tv's anymore :)
If you really want a CRT you can get them 2nd hand pretty cheap. I was dropping off some clothes at the Salvation Army by me and they had a sign saying "No longer accepting CRT TVs" as they had WAY too many of them. They ranged from $10-$50 for a big one and all were being sold as is.
Heres the xbox 360 launch lineup: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_launch#Titles
Nothing but crap in there. You're basically buying the console for CoD2 and PGR3, and these were the best titles on the system for quite a while! But the system matured and became good over time. This is a non-story really.
Remember when people talked a crap ton about Geometry wars ? sure it's a fine game, but the reason it go so hyped up and people were even discussing it is because there was nothing else to play.
So yeah, porting for those and PC will be relatively painless while the Wii U is stuck with Xbox 360 launch specs.
Nintendo has missed the boat.
360 had 512 megs of unified Ram and the Wii U has 2 GB, so not exactly 360 "launch specs"
So like I said pathetically slow. Would it have killed them to do an internal bay like the PS3? That way you can even connect at SATA speeds. Hell they could have at least used esata.
The PS3 ship with 2x BD-ROM, it has a throughput of 72Mbps, the 360 ships with a 12x DVD-ROM and has a throughput of 132Mbps ... USB 2.0 specification is 480 Mbps, so even though it's not esata fast it's by no means slow.
To be fair I thought the same thing for the first year of the 360 and the first 2 for the PS3... I'll gladly buy a Wii U for what they're asking, but I need the games too.
USB 2.0 and supports sizes up to 2 TB. As for "looks great" well that's why the USB ports are in the back of the machine...
a locked down box you plug into the living room TV, requiring the consent of the entire household to do so, to play games is really going out of the window.
I think that's why they went with the gamepad and the second screen option. Gabe from Penny arcade said he'll buy every game that supports that for Wii U over anything else because he doesn't have to stop playing if the family takes over the main TV... he can stream it to the gamepad and keep going.
I thought arcades died in the 80's. Only thing I've ever seen that resembles an arcade are those little nooks in malls and movie theaters. Even then the only thing i notice are those damn DDR machines with their flashing lights and techno music.
If you see a small arcade out there at a movie theater you'll likely find "redemption games", Shooting Games, Racing Games and or DDR. Those are the last hold outs that most people will drop quarters in.
They said Backwords compatibility would be achieved "through the cloud", so expect an OnLive type solution.
My concern is primarily compatibility. We've got a good sized collection of games -- far more dollars invested there than in the consoles -- and if the new hotness won't play them, it's not coming to my shelves.
My #1 deal breaker for the next X-box is Rock Band; If I can't seamlessly port over everything then it's simply not a consideration. I have far too much wrapped up into it and it's ecosystem and if it doesn't work on the new shiny I'll probably pass.
You must of missed all the news for the past month. "Guns" are the new "terrorism".
Not real guns mind you...they are perfectly fine, it's the fake guns that are a problem.
Any word on having the Half Life / Portal / Left 4 Dead games working on Linux? These are part of my "must have installed" games, that I go back to from time to time, so I'll need them working on Linux as well, thank you :)
They are being ported to Linux. Team Fortress 2 is already there, and they talk about getting better framerates in L4D2 specifically in their blog though it isn't released yet. I don't remember seeing a comment that they are porting all of them, but I think anything that runs the Source Engine is a safe bet.
It's a fully customizable (since the code's been released) Quake 3 with user created skins. Sure there's lots of skimpy dressed / naked avatars, but play with some of the modest ones and there's no reason this wouldn't be M or T rated.
Rock Band + friends + booze + no fail mode = Good times.
I'm in much the same boat looking for a game both my girlfriend and I would enjoy. She's open to the idea of it, we just haven't found a multiplayer game we're both into (although there are a lot of single player games we both enjoy, especially the Sim- and Sims series).
Find out what she likes and (more importantly what she) doesn't like about games. My fiance HATES twich games that take very fast reflexes and quick decisions like fighting games, so I started her out with turn based games and branched out from there.
No male I know that has younger kids and an 'equal' marriage has time for video games.
Then I'm happy to be your first, please to meet you! My fiance and I work full time and have a 5 year old in Kindergarten yet I still game. Sure it's changed a bit since I was single... I can't play Skyrim or Zelda anymore (as much as I want to) because I seldom get blocks of hours of free time needed to enjoy them. In general my game time comes after they are both asleep and instead of the big sweeping epics I play a lot of "Arcade style games". By "Arcade" I mean quick pick up and play games that I can play 20-30 minutes of and be completely content with.
There's also the games we like to play WITH eachother. She isn't a gamer by any stretch, but the 3 of us enjoy Wii Party, Wii Sports Resort ... stuff like that. We also play board games together as a family activity. So sure... I still game regularly, but it's just different is all.