I'm still waiting to see what happens in games when you sneeze. Also, I'll believe an intuitive system for movement is possible with this sort of technology when I see it. I mean, can you picture trying to control Mario or some other platform hopping character with this sort of system? How would you turn around (intuitively, mind you) without losing sight of the TV, but also actually making a 180 degree turn instead of a 90 degree turn? How would you make Luigi run around without running around yourself? I'm all for exercise, but I just don't think this kind of technology can be applied to many existing console genres - which so far are the ones that will probably sell best. I view this as a niche market technology with a very small niche.:P
4. Emergence of subscription-based games (a la WoW), social-communities, and greater numbers of broadband internet customers. Internet gaming is becoming a more viable option, as well as a more popular one. I'm sure Xbox Live is one of the Xbox group's biggest moneymakers/selling points - not to mention how the same system is used for every 360 game, letting you stay in constant touch with anyone on your "friends list" (Buddy list replacement?). I have no idea how extensive the services being offered by Sony/Nintendo are, but World of Warcraft has shown that people will buy into subscription games/services with the right incentives. And people will continue to spend money on that service, especially if they feel like they've invested too much time in it to let it go to waste.
See, I don't know...
So many users are uninformed about this sort of thing, or are just too lazy to figure out how to switch all their bookmarks over to a new browser (or even just afraid to try - because if it aint broke, don't fix it). I think that as long as Microsoft doesn't pre-install Firefox or Opera on their machines, the majority of users are not going to switch... which pretty much means Microsoft has the ability to ignore standards when they want to and indirectly set their own. I don't see IE going anywhere anytime soon, unfortunately. Who knows, maybe it's time for the world's geeks to recognize their place in the world as the gatekeepers to information and convenience, and stage a war against IE by designing the most commonly used websites to be IE-incompatible. In order words, things wont change until either the developers force IE to adapt to the market, or IE becomes benevolent towards developers.
I'll admit that, as a mac user, I felt that the Vista bashing was a little excessive and zealous, if not as inaccurate and smug as Thurrott would have me believe. I personally have a hard time reading this article and believing it when the title of the page calls itself "SuperSite for Windows" but fine, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on that one.
I'd also argue that each iteration of Mac OS X has been a significant update, as well. Do any of you remember 10.0? 10.1 and 10.2 were probably the updates I looked forward to the most, as I only hoped they would fix the plethora of bugs and speed the system up. Ugh.. I don't even want to go back to 10.3, now that I've been using 10.4 since it came out - and I don't even really use Spotlight or Dashboard all that often. Tiger seems much snappier to me, and overall more functional and clean. I have the highest expectations that Leopard will follow in this trend, as prelim. reviews have been surprised at how Leopard appears to be faster than the previous iterations. Also, a friend of mine at Apple has been running Leopard for a couple months apparently, and while it's still buggy, he's gone star-eyed over it. Then again, he works for Apple, so who can blame him. We will have to see what these Top Secret features that Jobs referred to are, but Thurrott clearly avoided the concept that maybe Apple has some serious face cards up their sleeve and don't want to tip their hand to Microsoft just yet. Besides the fact that this was a developer convention, not a preview of a release candidate Leopard, it's just good business sense not to talk about it yet, this far from release.
I use Mail.app as well. I dislike having to use a browser to access my mail, otherwise I'd be fine with Gmail's obviously slick interface. Thing is, Mail wont be updated 'til Leopard comes out - except for security patches - and I'm getting fed up with it. No spam blocker, sluggish performance, and it has some weird bugs where it can't keep track of which messages I've read and the like. I've downloaded Thunderbird, as it seems to be the other popular Mac mail client, and I've downloaded Eudora for old time's sake - but I've been reluctant to actually make the switch without some better opinions than "Rated 5 out of 5 by anonymous people who probably wrote the software!"
I still don't see much point in investing in an undecided format for games. Why not just wait it out, and put your games on multiple DVDs instead? Sure, might be more difficult with certain types of games, but it's do-able. I kind of liked how the Final Fantasy games (7, 8, 9 - although I can't be sure 9 was multiple CDs, I just don't remember) were on multiple discs - added a measure of accomplishment for each milestone. Sure, it's easier for RPGs to do this, as they have a somewhat linear storyline usually. I don't see why it can't be done with other genres, though. So, my vote? I'd rather buy the HD-DVD add on once the format war is decided, not be forced into buying Bluray with a PS3. I don't say this often, but good job, M$. And movies only? Even better, I don't want to spend five minutes waiting for my game to load up anyway, especially if I can just use multiple DVDs.
And yes, obviously it shouldn't get to the point where a game comes with 10 DVDs.
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I'm still waiting to see what happens in games when you sneeze. Also, I'll believe an intuitive system for movement is possible with this sort of technology when I see it. I mean, can you picture trying to control Mario or some other platform hopping character with this sort of system? How would you turn around (intuitively, mind you) without losing sight of the TV, but also actually making a 180 degree turn instead of a 90 degree turn? How would you make Luigi run around without running around yourself? I'm all for exercise, but I just don't think this kind of technology can be applied to many existing console genres - which so far are the ones that will probably sell best. I view this as a niche market technology with a very small niche. :P
4. Emergence of subscription-based games (a la WoW), social-communities, and greater numbers of broadband internet customers. Internet gaming is becoming a more viable option, as well as a more popular one. I'm sure Xbox Live is one of the Xbox group's biggest moneymakers/selling points - not to mention how the same system is used for every 360 game, letting you stay in constant touch with anyone on your "friends list" (Buddy list replacement?). I have no idea how extensive the services being offered by Sony/Nintendo are, but World of Warcraft has shown that people will buy into subscription games/services with the right incentives. And people will continue to spend money on that service, especially if they feel like they've invested too much time in it to let it go to waste.
[i think the author really just wants everything to be xhtml-strict compliant. i mean come on guys, support the standard /] (stupid lameness filter)
See, I don't know... So many users are uninformed about this sort of thing, or are just too lazy to figure out how to switch all their bookmarks over to a new browser (or even just afraid to try - because if it aint broke, don't fix it). I think that as long as Microsoft doesn't pre-install Firefox or Opera on their machines, the majority of users are not going to switch... which pretty much means Microsoft has the ability to ignore standards when they want to and indirectly set their own. I don't see IE going anywhere anytime soon, unfortunately. Who knows, maybe it's time for the world's geeks to recognize their place in the world as the gatekeepers to information and convenience, and stage a war against IE by designing the most commonly used websites to be IE-incompatible. In order words, things wont change until either the developers force IE to adapt to the market, or IE becomes benevolent towards developers.
I'll admit that, as a mac user, I felt that the Vista bashing was a little excessive and zealous, if not as inaccurate and smug as Thurrott would have me believe. I personally have a hard time reading this article and believing it when the title of the page calls itself "SuperSite for Windows" but fine, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on that one.
I'd also argue that each iteration of Mac OS X has been a significant update, as well. Do any of you remember 10.0? 10.1 and 10.2 were probably the updates I looked forward to the most, as I only hoped they would fix the plethora of bugs and speed the system up. Ugh.. I don't even want to go back to 10.3, now that I've been using 10.4 since it came out - and I don't even really use Spotlight or Dashboard all that often. Tiger seems much snappier to me, and overall more functional and clean. I have the highest expectations that Leopard will follow in this trend, as prelim. reviews have been surprised at how Leopard appears to be faster than the previous iterations. Also, a friend of mine at Apple has been running Leopard for a couple months apparently, and while it's still buggy, he's gone star-eyed over it. Then again, he works for Apple, so who can blame him. We will have to see what these Top Secret features that Jobs referred to are, but Thurrott clearly avoided the concept that maybe Apple has some serious face cards up their sleeve and don't want to tip their hand to Microsoft just yet. Besides the fact that this was a developer convention, not a preview of a release candidate Leopard, it's just good business sense not to talk about it yet, this far from release.
I use Mail.app as well. I dislike having to use a browser to access my mail, otherwise I'd be fine with Gmail's obviously slick interface. Thing is, Mail wont be updated 'til Leopard comes out - except for security patches - and I'm getting fed up with it. No spam blocker, sluggish performance, and it has some weird bugs where it can't keep track of which messages I've read and the like. I've downloaded Thunderbird, as it seems to be the other popular Mac mail client, and I've downloaded Eudora for old time's sake - but I've been reluctant to actually make the switch without some better opinions than "Rated 5 out of 5 by anonymous people who probably wrote the software!"
Thoughts?
I still don't see much point in investing in an undecided format for games. Why not just wait it out, and put your games on multiple DVDs instead? Sure, might be more difficult with certain types of games, but it's do-able. I kind of liked how the Final Fantasy games (7, 8, 9 - although I can't be sure 9 was multiple CDs, I just don't remember) were on multiple discs - added a measure of accomplishment for each milestone. Sure, it's easier for RPGs to do this, as they have a somewhat linear storyline usually. I don't see why it can't be done with other genres, though. So, my vote? I'd rather buy the HD-DVD add on once the format war is decided, not be forced into buying Bluray with a PS3. I don't say this often, but good job, M$. And movies only? Even better, I don't want to spend five minutes waiting for my game to load up anyway, especially if I can just use multiple DVDs. And yes, obviously it shouldn't get to the point where a game comes with 10 DVDs.