Sucks to be you if you're one of the 10M+ people who already bought a 360 (or a few of them)! It seems stupid to put a new drive in the console now.
Let's count the number of different 360 configurations, shall we?
1. 360 with 20GB HDD
2. 360 with 120GB HDD
3. 360 with no HDD
4. 360 with any of the above and HD-DVD add-on (deceased)
5. And now... 360 with ??GB HDD and BD-ROM drive
This doesn't even account for differences in CPU die, etc! In the meantime developers are stuck designing for the LCD (least common denominator, not liquid crystal display!) so having all the extra stuff makes no difference in your games. Thanks MS, but I'll pass and get a PS3 with my HDTV.
If you want challenging try Trauma Center on normal or hard mode. I haven't played through the entire Wii version, but by the time I beat the DS version I was surprised my DS was still alive!
Remember the 360 has been out a year longer than the Wii. Just give it some time and (hopefully) you will have the same deep challenging gaming on your Wii that you can have on your 360. Unless you want good online.... damn it Nintendo...
who never particularly cared for the most recent Dragon Quest games, this game looks so much different that it should definitely be worth checking out. I am quite excited about the concept myself!
So any reason why you chose this thread for your denunciation of the diversification of slashdot material? Last I knew Slashdot has been divided up into sections and rather "mainstream geek" for a long time. I don't understand why you think people can't pay attention to certain stories and ignore others that they are not interested in...
So what's the problem here? No experts on slashdot? *snicker* I think you came to the wrong place sir.
Also: Trauma Center. Countless instances of screaming and wanting to throw things to get through that one. And that's not even the X missions. The new monkey ball for Wii doesn't disappoint in difficulty either...
Okami - seriously, play it, it's up there with Twilight Princess
Zelda TP
Trauma Center: Under the Knife/Second Opinion - intuitive, challenging and original
Meteos - another DS gem, fresh breath for the tetris-style puzzle and great multiplayer
Metroid Prime - okay, not quite 2-3 years, but seriously...
SSBM...yeah. basically created a new genre(actually continued on and perfected the original)
the list goes on... Not to say that all the games I've played growing up aren't still great, because some of my favorite games of all time are not very recent, but I think it's silly to blow off the modern games industry. There really is a lot to offer. There's probably a higher crap/greatness ratio, but well... look at the SNES... lotta crap there too.;)
On a completely "no one cares but me" note, it makes me very happy that I can actually understand what you guys are talking about, whereas a few months ago I would have had only a vague understanding.
You make a good point, in that IBM did take a bit of time to develop Broadway, and they took the time to improve the Gekko by using a 90nm process and improving power consumption, so why wouldn't they make other small improvements unless they were on a time crunch (which I doubt they were, since Nintendo probably approached them about this years ago).
I hadn't thought about config registers either, but that would make complete sense. I wonder in fact if there would be any other practical way to do it...
From what I understood of the Xbox360 (which is not much), developing for that would be more like PC development than for any of the other consoles, since it seems to have a load of stuff running in the background, of course not to the same level as Windows, but that's the direction they're heading in. Correct me if I'm wrong.
grahm I've got a question for you:
As a game developer, do you think the "requirement" of using parallel processing techniques to improve performance on the PS3 and 360 will make a significant impact on the release cycle, development cost, etc. for games on these systems as compared to games on Wii? Will 1st gen games on PS3 make good use of the Cell? Did 1st gen games on the 360 make good use of its 3 cores? Are you even in a good position to answer these questions?
I too, like many Slashdot readers probably, have spent some time working at a games shop. I worked for a year at a local shop in a relatively small city in Iowa (150k pop. or so). http://www.videogamedepot.com/
I worked this year during about the exact midpoint of the current gen's lifetime, when the PS2 was pulling away, though you had some great releases on GC like Viewtiful Joe, and Soul Calibur II (the GC version sold WAY more than the other 2) and the Xbox was actually starting to sell. We had a large collection of used "classic" games as well as quite a large selection of imports. We had movies, anime, all the usual game store stuff. Unfortunately, most of our import sales were online sales, and since then the online business of the store has declined dramatically.
Being a gamer, and quite a geek, I was of course excited to sell the people the games I liked, and got rather dissapointed on the days when all we would see were a few people looking for the new Madden, etc. But I did make a point of knowing about even these games, even though I hadn't really played much of them. I learned a lot from my co-workers' experiences as well, and became quite a bit more knowledgable about video games than I was before.
The best part about it was the fact that we had a policy to tell it like it is. We never lied, but we never said "buy that" or "don't buy that" without a reason either. It's just a matter of understanding what your customer is looking for, and making your best effort to sell them exactly what they want to play, even if you don't like it. In other words, don't try to dissuade people on entire genres, but rather on the worst games of each genre.
Did I like working there? Heck yes! Was it rediculously annoying at times? Oh yeah. Would I do it again? Maybe, but not long term.
One other thing I found to be very different in my experience was the last section about playing less since working there. My game playing habits increased tenfold while working at VGD, largely due to the discount I received.
Well, this is kinda old news, I saw this about a year ago(the amusement park site, not the how stuff works of it). Nintendo hasn't done anything yet. They've got bigger fish to fry.
So why does Mr. Rein hate intel chips? Is he talking about GPUs?
*a bit confused*
Clarification would be appreciated. (Note: "Because AMD OWNZ U" is not really clarification.")
Before you go tossing aside "Judeo-Christian authoritarian morality" you should think about it a little. You might be unhappy with the result of this.
I try to follow the teachings of Jesus myself (often failing of course), and very often I too find myself wondering why parents of all sorts seem to have such a problem with their children being exposed to say, a Victoria's Secret ad, and yet have no problem whatsoever exposing their children to violence, essentially telling them this is ok. While the Bible does teach about monogamous relationships (specifically marriage), hiding the facts of life from your kids and making the subject of sex taboo is only harmful to the child, who will grow up, as you said, with some degree of psychological damage and low self esteem when he/she finds out he is a "dirty" sexual creature, etc. Jesus never spoke against sex itself(that woulda been interesting, Christianity wouldn't have been around long!), and while it is inferred he believed that promiscuious behavior was morally wrong, the Bible (in this specific verse Paul) teaches to reach out in love, not in judgement(this is another difficult one, if you're honest with yourself) to all people. However, certainly to love your neighbor as yourself speaks against violence, and yet while parents are very VERY careful of their kids' sexual behaviours, many seem to deem violence one of those things that is more like "eh, whatcha gonna do?? *wink wink*".
If you want my opinion on swearing as well (maybe you don't but I'm in a strange mood tonight so I'll give it anyway), here's the short version. Yeah, swear words are just words to express strong emotions. It's difficult to argue against this, and say that any word in itself could be inherently bad. However, the entire purpose for these words is to convey strong, often angry, even hateful emotions, that if you listen to Yoda, lead to violence and the dark side. So yeah, there's nothing inherently wrong with swearing, but words hold a lot of power, and should be chosen carefully, if you ask me. Casually telling someone to "fuck off" is both desensitizing people (i.e. destroying the meaning of the word) and conveying a feeling that maybe you have, but are anger and hate good emotions to nurture and harbor? I certainly wouldn't want to raise my children in a bitter, angry home.
If you truly believe that morality is a construct of humans, and is archaic and should be gotten rid of, then I would ask you why you do display such compassion to speak out against violence and torture.
Not to pick on you or anything, because I totally get where your coming from, and some of your sentiments are dead on. Ultra-conservative-pretend-it-doesn't-exist-and-we 're-a-perfect-family is certainly not helping raise children in a balanced manner, but to toss aside morality is rather bold, and I truly wonder how the world would be better for it... Then again, maybe I am exaggerating your statements in my mind, and writing all this for nothing.
But I really hope I have the joy of having children with my fiance someday, and I think that maybe this great act of bringing new life into the world will be an experience you might one day have and love as well. Or maybe not, but that's where I'm at right now. XD Please enjoy your life! Live, love, be happy and make others happy!
Oh, and of course VIDEO GAMES ARE TEH DEVIL!!!11!11
So for those of you who actually read this, I'm curious, would you consider these views to be "conservative"? Not to say that would be inherently bad (conservation itself has an important role to play in society) but at the point I'm at in life I like to think of myself as somewhat "open-minded". Please blow my mind and tell me how closed minded "my" ideas are. Broaden my horizons, I'm sure I could use it.:P
It's a bit more than a geek tool I would say, with how easy mac makes it to use! All you need is someone who understands "buy a copy of windows, run bootcamp tool, put in windows cd. install windows (anyone can do this nowadays), burn drivers, voila"
The trickiest part is actually installing windows, but seriously, anyone who wants to and is willing to drop the cash on windows can do it if they know so much as how to click through an automatic installer. Now, whether a non-geek apple user will -want- to do this... maybe that's what would make it a geek tool.
Exactly. Cross platform development is very expensive, even using high-level cross-platform languages like Java, Python, and doing any web development.
Game development generally uses lower-level more platform specific languages, so the costs are greater yet, since you're not only testing on multiple platforms, but using separate libraries and code fragments for the different platforms.
But my argument makes the assumption that the person who pirates a video game likes video games, and would spend a given amount of time playing them, a fair assumption. And as I said before, it also makes the assumption that the person likes video games enough that she would pay money for them. Those who spend their time building models and bowling, instead of playing video games aren't/weren't in the market in the first place. But piracy simply eliminates the market by eliminating demand for goods since they can be had for free.
If you're pirating games and never playing them.... OK then, more power to you, I don't really care.
Hideo Kojima has made some (arguable) masterpieces in the Metal Gear Solid games that delve into many subjects that such things considered highbrow in music, etc. do as well.
Games (and for that matter anime in America and other places) are often not taken seriously by older generations of today because these people are unfamiliar with them, and have the perception that such things are for children (or simply those who haven't developed a sense of "taste"). When these generations are replaced by those who grew up as an audience to these games, you might see such a trend.
However, if the focus is still being put on the power of the new technology instead of the content of the games, Kojima's masterpieces will only be considered part of what we have already in games: the "classics". Are these "highbrow"? That is a matter of perception.
Slashdot Mirror
Sucks to be you if you're one of the 10M+ people who already bought a 360 (or a few of them)! It seems stupid to put a new drive in the console now.
Let's count the number of different 360 configurations, shall we?
1. 360 with 20GB HDD
2. 360 with 120GB HDD
3. 360 with no HDD
4. 360 with any of the above and HD-DVD add-on (deceased)
5. And now... 360 with ??GB HDD and BD-ROM drive
This doesn't even account for differences in CPU die, etc! In the meantime developers are stuck designing for the LCD (least common denominator, not liquid crystal display!) so having all the extra stuff makes no difference in your games. Thanks MS, but I'll pass and get a PS3 with my HDTV.
"Why should I have to wait for a courier to bring a canister of film here?"
... Is it a long wait?
I guess I have a hard drive full of porn. Who knew?
XD
My thoughts exactly!
I assume you played through Zelda?
If you want challenging try Trauma Center on normal or hard mode. I haven't played through the entire Wii version, but by the time I beat the DS version I was surprised my DS was still alive!
Remember the 360 has been out a year longer than the Wii. Just give it some time and (hopefully) you will have the same deep challenging gaming on your Wii that you can have on your 360. Unless you want good online.... damn it Nintendo...
Wii will have half the lifespan of the other two. I fully expect another Nintendo console within 3 years. If not, I'll be severely disappointed.
Actually I think a better example of this would be Geometry Wars.
who never particularly cared for the most recent Dragon Quest games, this game looks so much different that it should definitely be worth checking out. I am quite excited about the concept myself!
You make a good point: many of us don't have friends! Oh noes! XD
So any reason why you chose this thread for your denunciation of the diversification of slashdot material? Last I knew Slashdot has been divided up into sections and rather "mainstream geek" for a long time. I don't understand why you think people can't pay attention to certain stories and ignore others that they are not interested in...
So what's the problem here? No experts on slashdot? *snicker* I think you came to the wrong place sir.
Yeah, unless you want to umm... play DS games?
Also: Trauma Center. Countless instances of screaming and wanting to throw things to get through that one. And that's not even the X missions. The new monkey ball for Wii doesn't disappoint in difficulty either...
Okami - seriously, play it, it's up there with Twilight Princess ...yeah. basically created a new genre(actually continued on and perfected the original)
;)
Zelda TP
Trauma Center: Under the Knife/Second Opinion - intuitive, challenging and original
Meteos - another DS gem, fresh breath for the tetris-style puzzle and great multiplayer
Metroid Prime - okay, not quite 2-3 years, but seriously...
SSBM
the list goes on... Not to say that all the games I've played growing up aren't still great, because some of my favorite games of all time are not very recent, but I think it's silly to blow off the modern games industry. There really is a lot to offer. There's probably a higher crap/greatness ratio, but well... look at the SNES... lotta crap there too.
Ryan North is my hero.
On a completely "no one cares but me" note, it makes me very happy that I can actually understand what you guys are talking about, whereas a few months ago I would have had only a vague understanding.
You make a good point, in that IBM did take a bit of time to develop Broadway, and they took the time to improve the Gekko by using a 90nm process and improving power consumption, so why wouldn't they make other small improvements unless they were on a time crunch (which I doubt they were, since Nintendo probably approached them about this years ago).
I hadn't thought about config registers either, but that would make complete sense. I wonder in fact if there would be any other practical way to do it...
From what I understood of the Xbox360 (which is not much), developing for that would be more like PC development than for any of the other consoles, since it seems to have a load of stuff running in the background, of course not to the same level as Windows, but that's the direction they're heading in. Correct me if I'm wrong.
grahm I've got a question for you:
As a game developer, do you think the "requirement" of using parallel processing techniques to improve performance on the PS3 and 360 will make a significant impact on the release cycle, development cost, etc. for games on these systems as compared to games on Wii? Will 1st gen games on PS3 make good use of the Cell? Did 1st gen games on the 360 make good use of its 3 cores? Are you even in a good position to answer these questions?
Inquiring minds want to know!
I too, like many Slashdot readers probably, have spent some time working at a games shop. I worked for a year at a local shop in a relatively small city in Iowa (150k pop. or so). http://www.videogamedepot.com/
I worked this year during about the exact midpoint of the current gen's lifetime, when the PS2 was pulling away, though you had some great releases on GC like Viewtiful Joe, and Soul Calibur II (the GC version sold WAY more than the other 2) and the Xbox was actually starting to sell. We had a large collection of used "classic" games as well as quite a large selection of imports. We had movies, anime, all the usual game store stuff. Unfortunately, most of our import sales were online sales, and since then the online business of the store has declined dramatically.
Being a gamer, and quite a geek, I was of course excited to sell the people the games I liked, and got rather dissapointed on the days when all we would see were a few people looking for the new Madden, etc. But I did make a point of knowing about even these games, even though I hadn't really played much of them. I learned a lot from my co-workers' experiences as well, and became quite a bit more knowledgable about video games than I was before.
The best part about it was the fact that we had a policy to tell it like it is. We never lied, but we never said "buy that" or "don't buy that" without a reason either. It's just a matter of understanding what your customer is looking for, and making your best effort to sell them exactly what they want to play, even if you don't like it. In other words, don't try to dissuade people on entire genres, but rather on the worst games of each genre.
Did I like working there? Heck yes! Was it rediculously annoying at times? Oh yeah. Would I do it again? Maybe, but not long term.
One other thing I found to be very different in my experience was the last section about playing less since working there. My game playing habits increased tenfold while working at VGD, largely due to the discount I received.
Well, this is kinda old news, I saw this about a year ago(the amusement park site, not the how stuff works of it). Nintendo hasn't done anything yet. They've got bigger fish to fry.
So why does Mr. Rein hate intel chips? Is he talking about GPUs? *a bit confused* Clarification would be appreciated. (Note: "Because AMD OWNZ U" is not really clarification.")
Before you go tossing aside "Judeo-Christian authoritarian morality" you should think about it a little. You might be unhappy with the result of this.
e 're-a-perfect-family is certainly not helping raise children in a balanced manner, but to toss aside morality is rather bold, and I truly wonder how the world would be better for it... Then again, maybe I am exaggerating your statements in my mind, and writing all this for nothing.
:P
I try to follow the teachings of Jesus myself (often failing of course), and very often I too find myself wondering why parents of all sorts seem to have such a problem with their children being exposed to say, a Victoria's Secret ad, and yet have no problem whatsoever exposing their children to violence, essentially telling them this is ok. While the Bible does teach about monogamous relationships (specifically marriage), hiding the facts of life from your kids and making the subject of sex taboo is only harmful to the child, who will grow up, as you said, with some degree of psychological damage and low self esteem when he/she finds out he is a "dirty" sexual creature, etc. Jesus never spoke against sex itself(that woulda been interesting, Christianity wouldn't have been around long!), and while it is inferred he believed that promiscuious behavior was morally wrong, the Bible (in this specific verse Paul) teaches to reach out in love, not in judgement(this is another difficult one, if you're honest with yourself) to all people. However, certainly to love your neighbor as yourself speaks against violence, and yet while parents are very VERY careful of their kids' sexual behaviours, many seem to deem violence one of those things that is more like "eh, whatcha gonna do?? *wink wink*".
If you want my opinion on swearing as well (maybe you don't but I'm in a strange mood tonight so I'll give it anyway), here's the short version. Yeah, swear words are just words to express strong emotions. It's difficult to argue against this, and say that any word in itself could be inherently bad. However, the entire purpose for these words is to convey strong, often angry, even hateful emotions, that if you listen to Yoda, lead to violence and the dark side. So yeah, there's nothing inherently wrong with swearing, but words hold a lot of power, and should be chosen carefully, if you ask me. Casually telling someone to "fuck off" is both desensitizing people (i.e. destroying the meaning of the word) and conveying a feeling that maybe you have, but are anger and hate good emotions to nurture and harbor? I certainly wouldn't want to raise my children in a bitter, angry home.
If you truly believe that morality is a construct of humans, and is archaic and should be gotten rid of, then I would ask you why you do display such compassion to speak out against violence and torture.
Not to pick on you or anything, because I totally get where your coming from, and some of your sentiments are dead on. Ultra-conservative-pretend-it-doesn't-exist-and-w
But I really hope I have the joy of having children with my fiance someday, and I think that maybe this great act of bringing new life into the world will be an experience you might one day have and love as well. Or maybe not, but that's where I'm at right now. XD Please enjoy your life! Live, love, be happy and make others happy!
Oh, and of course VIDEO GAMES ARE TEH DEVIL!!!11!11
So for those of you who actually read this, I'm curious, would you consider these views to be "conservative"? Not to say that would be inherently bad (conservation itself has an important role to play in society) but at the point I'm at in life I like to think of myself as somewhat "open-minded". Please blow my mind and tell me how closed minded "my" ideas are. Broaden my horizons, I'm sure I could use it.
JRPGs for 360? I think not. XD
It's a bit more than a geek tool I would say, with how easy mac makes it to use! All you need is someone who understands "buy a copy of windows, run bootcamp tool, put in windows cd. install windows (anyone can do this nowadays), burn drivers, voila"
The trickiest part is actually installing windows, but seriously, anyone who wants to and is willing to drop the cash on windows can do it if they know so much as how to click through an automatic installer. Now, whether a non-geek apple user will -want- to do this... maybe that's what would make it a geek tool.
There goes the only possible benefit of "downsizing".
Exactly. Cross platform development is very expensive, even using high-level cross-platform languages like Java, Python, and doing any web development.
Game development generally uses lower-level more platform specific languages, so the costs are greater yet, since you're not only testing on multiple platforms, but using separate libraries and code fragments for the different platforms.
You're completely correct. They might.
But my argument makes the assumption that the person who pirates a video game likes video games, and would spend a given amount of time playing them, a fair assumption. And as I said before, it also makes the assumption that the person likes video games enough that she would pay money for them. Those who spend their time building models and bowling, instead of playing video games aren't/weren't in the market in the first place. But piracy simply eliminates the market by eliminating demand for goods since they can be had for free.
If you're pirating games and never playing them.... OK then, more power to you, I don't really care.
Hideo Kojima has made some (arguable) masterpieces in the Metal Gear Solid games that delve into many subjects that such things considered highbrow in music, etc. do as well.
Games (and for that matter anime in America and other places) are often not taken seriously by older generations of today because these people are unfamiliar with them, and have the perception that such things are for children (or simply those who haven't developed a sense of "taste"). When these generations are replaced by those who grew up as an audience to these games, you might see such a trend.
However, if the focus is still being put on the power of the new technology instead of the content of the games, Kojima's masterpieces will only be considered part of what we have already in games: the "classics". Are these "highbrow"? That is a matter of perception.