A lot of this is true. However, the allocation of funds for both companies is going to be vastly different. Sony merely cannot afford to spend over x% on just gaming, due to costs from other divisions. Nintendo can. No matter how important Blue-ray is to the company, there will come a point when Sony cannot afford to put more into it. Pushing 100% of their available money towards the gaming division would be a very incredibly stupid move for Sony, however 100% of Nintendo's money is already, arguably, allocated to the gaming division:)
Definitely interesting numbers. The thing to remember, though, is that simply because Sony has more markets, the numbers are skewed. In this case, Nintendo really would have more money to spend, since Sony has money off in so many directions, and Nintendo is solely focused on games. To be fair, the comparison really should be between Nintendo and Sony's Gaming division, right?
Just curious, where are you getting your data from? Last I heard, Nintendo was making vast profits off of just about everything they do, and have posted an increase in virtually every year they have been around (save one), while Sony's profits over all dropped a ridiculous amount of money, and they have been quite often in the red many many times in the Games division.
I'm just wondering if you have any actual numbers, because I am honestly curious to see who DOES have "deeper pockets" at the moment. Is there something behind this, or are you just assuming they have more money because they make more products?
Funnily enough Ubuntu failed on installation for me and got worse after that.
I tried installing it and found that there was no option at the time to install to an existing partition. It forced me to reformat the harddrive, which I thought was monumentally stupid. Then, the installer completely messed up so I could not see a single thing. Most of the install was guesswork, trying to figure out what to enter when.
Once it was installed, nothing worked of course. Linux definitely does not have the same driver support, which is obvious. No need to point out the reasons, as they are pretty obvious (Microsoft has the money etc). The reasons are irrelevant, the important thing to me is on Windows my devices work and on Linux they don't. Sure, there may be a way to change and add modules and mess with settings, but I have to admit I really do not want to baby my system to do something that another OS can do out of the box. And I am sure Microsoft knows this.
In short for me, using Ubuntu meant a lack of internet and a lack of accurate and complete gaming. The internet would not function due to the lack of device support, and that cut me off from the majority of additional programs and tweaks necessary to make Linux bearable. The lack of gaming is obvious, and even though I tried Wine I have never successfully gotten a game to run even close to smooth, even games reportedly easy to use in Wine.
In summary, if you like tweaking a system and potentially not having shit work for long periods of time, then Ubuntu is a "serious contender". Unfortunately no Linux distribution has, in my eyes, come even close to making itself a viable desktop solution, and it really won't unless there is more support. The problem here is that it needs more userbase to get more support, and so the vicious cycle continues.
Plus, the world currently has a business standard for desktops, and I just generally like Windows.
I feel the need to mention something. The pricing scheme for Xbox Live can be all over the board. There are a few ways to do it, is the reason for this. The first is to simply tie your credit card into your Xbox Live account and pay the $50 or so a year automatically. Another way is to go in and buy those Xbox Live cards. It should be noted there are multiple versions as well: A 3 month for something like $20, and a year for $60 or so. There are also Xbox Live "packs" that come with little freebies like a free Xbox Live Arcade game and headset which are more expensive. THEN there is also a box deal that has the 12 month card, the freebies, and an extra month added on "for free".
However, Microsoft is one of the best support places I've ever had to deal with. Some examples (unrelated) are my Xbox arrived broken, and it was fixed and returned to me in three days (INCLUDING shipping). My 360 died (it was a 2005 model) and it was fixed no questions asked almmost immediately as well. I bring this up because I had a similar issue with Xbox Live. I couldn't pay the $50 up front one year when my subscription ran out so I contacted them to cancel. They asked why (of course) and so I just told them. Then they offered to let me pay $7 monthly instead of a lump sum, an option not available (at the time, dunno if they added it) in the account settings.
Also note that Xbox Live encompasses ALL of Xbox Live. You're not paying for 360 online, you're paying for both consoles. This means you can fire up a regular Xbox game and play that online under the same subscription, especially useful with the backwards compatible games like Halo 2.
I have noted that everytime I go to any store (Target, Meijer, Gamestop, etc., and I go a lot) the PS3 kiosk has been broken every single time. I have never seen anyone actually playing it, people seem to flock to the 360 and the wii and even handhelds, both the DS and PSP. But never the PS3.
I guess it seems that I am not going insane, but that there really is a major issue in order for there to be this level of a coverup.
With the Blue Dragon 360 bundle, though, preorders have been selling out in Japan, which seems to imply that the 360 may just do alright there after all.
If you take a look at iPod ads, the Apple name is also usually left out. The logo is sometimes there, but usually in an extremely diminished capacity. I did a report on this for a media class and one of the possible conclusions was that Apple specifically wanted to take their name off so that when people "discovered" (or remembered, more likely) that Apple made it, they would think more friendly thoughts about their other products. Similarly people who heard negative rumors about Apples (the "Macs suck lol" crowd) would be more likely to purchase if the brand name was not shown.
Food for thought I guess, since Microsoft is not the first company to leave their name off the product, my Shuffle doesn't say Apple on it anywhere.
Lack of proof is not necessarily a proof of a lack.
In other words, no one is saying they can prove it yet, but rather that it's so likely that it is most definitely true.
I dunno, I thought episode 3 was pretty good. It didn't have as much of the nasally poor acting in it, and it didn't have some goofy little kid who can't act shouting his lines, and it didn't have Jar-Jar speaking parts. And, you know, it had a plot.
Did you really just call him an idiot for his reasoning, then completely agree with his reasoning? His point was, I beileve that obviously these players do not really cost $1000 to produce, and are being marked up, and he used DVD players as an example. They also cost tons of money to start but are now being sold very cheaply. So what happened, are all these companies taking massive hits to sell DVD players? Doubtful, even taking into account the razer-blade model of marketing.
So yes, over time the players will be cheaper, which would show that no, they don't really cost a grand.
Also a lot of people saying how entrenched DVDs are seem to have forgotten the early 90s and the "struggle" DVDs had in getting off the ground, what with the heavily entrenched VHS to compete against.
Where does "Probability of intelligent life: ~50%" come from? That seems like the kind of thing we really cannot claim to know until we have even a single piece of evidence for other intelligent life.
Surprise, eating less food and drinking healthier drinks is more healthy? I guess I don't get it. I don't think anyone here was saying that McDonalds was healthy, just that it's nice to eat, at least sometimes. I happen to enjoy McDonalds food for some reason, but I know it's bad so I limit my intake.
What you said is stupid though. It's the same as saying "I could eat a salad and it would be healthier" or "I could eat nothing and not gain any weight!" Of course, it's cause and effect.
I dunno, one of my friends at work used it and he seemed really dubious at first, but after a while he came to love it. There was one arguably minor gripe he had with it but it definitely did not crash at all. Two different people, two completely different experiences I guess.
Windows has this function too, you just can't access it with the out-of-the-box install, it requires a special addon to actually enable it.
If I remember, what they did was write the code to implement it, then decided against it and removed any way to access it.
Also, I'm pretty sure this was from Windows NT, so all NT based OSes potentially have this feature.
I was on the Wish beta, one of those 80,000 I guess. It was a pretty good game, kind of the thing I expected UO2 to be before that was canned. The Wish development team was really cool as well, the kind of developers I would really want making an MMO I'm addicted to. During the beta they had, of course, many different events and stuff to serve as a server stress test. Our guild was actually integrated into the story line due to the size of the guild and number of active players.
Such a fun game, even if the graphics were a little less impressive than most, and there were still bugs to be worked out. Waht game DOESN'T have those nowadays, especially MMOs!
Major graphical sacrifices? It could be the size of the enviroment I suppose, but it could also be the fact that Rockstar used the same graphics engine for III, VC, and SA. I really don't think that engine was built to sustain that kind of size, and I'd be really surprised if Rock* didn't build their GTA IV engine with larger outdoor environments mixed with indoro environments in mind.
By this point I would expect every building in GTA IV to be enterable, without load times, with more than just the same three or four interiors. Then again, maybe I am giving Rockstar too much credit.
Anyone remember Death Race and its media frenzy? The media had the same reaction as it did with Mortal Kombat and other games, only instead of being actual bloody violence, it was a car running over vaguely stick-like shapes.
The media and legislation now is the same as it was back in the 1970's, but it's still interesting to look at recent events I suppose.
See, your whole point is invalidated by you saying that I *could* have put it in an account somewhere and earned extra money. I didn't. Therefore you cannot say that I paid more money than I should have in the scam. I was going to spend $50 + tax. I spent exactly $50+tax, and I did not take it from my savings account to do so, I took it from my non-interest-earning checking account.
Also, you can't just pull numbers like 7 months out of thin air, I preordered it two days before release. The time it would take to calculate how much was "lost in inflation" in those two days is insignificant.
Your theory is a sound one if you mention that it is potentially costing more, but you cannot deal in absolutes like that.
I guess I forgot to pay interest that time I preordered Civ IV.
If not for that preorder, I wouldn't have had the game on release day, and since I love the series I wanted it as soon as I could get my grubby hands on it. It's not always a scam, the only scam associated with preordering is the jerks at gamestores who try to pressure you into it because they have a quota to fill.
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A lot of this is true. However, the allocation of funds for both companies is going to be vastly different. Sony merely cannot afford to spend over x% on just gaming, due to costs from other divisions. Nintendo can. No matter how important Blue-ray is to the company, there will come a point when Sony cannot afford to put more into it. Pushing 100% of their available money towards the gaming division would be a very incredibly stupid move for Sony, however 100% of Nintendo's money is already, arguably, allocated to the gaming division :)
Definitely interesting numbers. The thing to remember, though, is that simply because Sony has more markets, the numbers are skewed. In this case, Nintendo really would have more money to spend, since Sony has money off in so many directions, and Nintendo is solely focused on games. To be fair, the comparison really should be between Nintendo and Sony's Gaming division, right?
Just curious, where are you getting your data from? Last I heard, Nintendo was making vast profits off of just about everything they do, and have posted an increase in virtually every year they have been around (save one), while Sony's profits over all dropped a ridiculous amount of money, and they have been quite often in the red many many times in the Games division.
I'm just wondering if you have any actual numbers, because I am honestly curious to see who DOES have "deeper pockets" at the moment. Is there something behind this, or are you just assuming they have more money because they make more products?
Funnily enough Ubuntu failed on installation for me and got worse after that. I tried installing it and found that there was no option at the time to install to an existing partition. It forced me to reformat the harddrive, which I thought was monumentally stupid. Then, the installer completely messed up so I could not see a single thing. Most of the install was guesswork, trying to figure out what to enter when. Once it was installed, nothing worked of course. Linux definitely does not have the same driver support, which is obvious. No need to point out the reasons, as they are pretty obvious (Microsoft has the money etc). The reasons are irrelevant, the important thing to me is on Windows my devices work and on Linux they don't. Sure, there may be a way to change and add modules and mess with settings, but I have to admit I really do not want to baby my system to do something that another OS can do out of the box. And I am sure Microsoft knows this. In short for me, using Ubuntu meant a lack of internet and a lack of accurate and complete gaming. The internet would not function due to the lack of device support, and that cut me off from the majority of additional programs and tweaks necessary to make Linux bearable. The lack of gaming is obvious, and even though I tried Wine I have never successfully gotten a game to run even close to smooth, even games reportedly easy to use in Wine. In summary, if you like tweaking a system and potentially not having shit work for long periods of time, then Ubuntu is a "serious contender". Unfortunately no Linux distribution has, in my eyes, come even close to making itself a viable desktop solution, and it really won't unless there is more support. The problem here is that it needs more userbase to get more support, and so the vicious cycle continues. Plus, the world currently has a business standard for desktops, and I just generally like Windows.
I feel the need to mention something. The pricing scheme for Xbox Live can be all over the board. There are a few ways to do it, is the reason for this. The first is to simply tie your credit card into your Xbox Live account and pay the $50 or so a year automatically. Another way is to go in and buy those Xbox Live cards. It should be noted there are multiple versions as well: A 3 month for something like $20, and a year for $60 or so. There are also Xbox Live "packs" that come with little freebies like a free Xbox Live Arcade game and headset which are more expensive. THEN there is also a box deal that has the 12 month card, the freebies, and an extra month added on "for free". However, Microsoft is one of the best support places I've ever had to deal with. Some examples (unrelated) are my Xbox arrived broken, and it was fixed and returned to me in three days (INCLUDING shipping). My 360 died (it was a 2005 model) and it was fixed no questions asked almmost immediately as well. I bring this up because I had a similar issue with Xbox Live. I couldn't pay the $50 up front one year when my subscription ran out so I contacted them to cancel. They asked why (of course) and so I just told them. Then they offered to let me pay $7 monthly instead of a lump sum, an option not available (at the time, dunno if they added it) in the account settings. Also note that Xbox Live encompasses ALL of Xbox Live. You're not paying for 360 online, you're paying for both consoles. This means you can fire up a regular Xbox game and play that online under the same subscription, especially useful with the backwards compatible games like Halo 2.
I have noted that everytime I go to any store (Target, Meijer, Gamestop, etc., and I go a lot) the PS3 kiosk has been broken every single time. I have never seen anyone actually playing it, people seem to flock to the 360 and the wii and even handhelds, both the DS and PSP. But never the PS3. I guess it seems that I am not going insane, but that there really is a major issue in order for there to be this level of a coverup.
With the Blue Dragon 360 bundle, though, preorders have been selling out in Japan, which seems to imply that the 360 may just do alright there after all.
If you take a look at iPod ads, the Apple name is also usually left out. The logo is sometimes there, but usually in an extremely diminished capacity. I did a report on this for a media class and one of the possible conclusions was that Apple specifically wanted to take their name off so that when people "discovered" (or remembered, more likely) that Apple made it, they would think more friendly thoughts about their other products. Similarly people who heard negative rumors about Apples (the "Macs suck lol" crowd) would be more likely to purchase if the brand name was not shown. Food for thought I guess, since Microsoft is not the first company to leave their name off the product, my Shuffle doesn't say Apple on it anywhere.
Lack of proof is not necessarily a proof of a lack. In other words, no one is saying they can prove it yet, but rather that it's so likely that it is most definitely true.
I dunno, I thought episode 3 was pretty good. It didn't have as much of the nasally poor acting in it, and it didn't have some goofy little kid who can't act shouting his lines, and it didn't have Jar-Jar speaking parts. And, you know, it had a plot.
Did you really just call him an idiot for his reasoning, then completely agree with his reasoning? His point was, I beileve that obviously these players do not really cost $1000 to produce, and are being marked up, and he used DVD players as an example. They also cost tons of money to start but are now being sold very cheaply. So what happened, are all these companies taking massive hits to sell DVD players? Doubtful, even taking into account the razer-blade model of marketing. So yes, over time the players will be cheaper, which would show that no, they don't really cost a grand. Also a lot of people saying how entrenched DVDs are seem to have forgotten the early 90s and the "struggle" DVDs had in getting off the ground, what with the heavily entrenched VHS to compete against.
Where does "Probability of intelligent life: ~50%" come from? That seems like the kind of thing we really cannot claim to know until we have even a single piece of evidence for other intelligent life.
Surprise, eating less food and drinking healthier drinks is more healthy? I guess I don't get it. I don't think anyone here was saying that McDonalds was healthy, just that it's nice to eat, at least sometimes. I happen to enjoy McDonalds food for some reason, but I know it's bad so I limit my intake. What you said is stupid though. It's the same as saying "I could eat a salad and it would be healthier" or "I could eat nothing and not gain any weight!" Of course, it's cause and effect.
I dunno, one of my friends at work used it and he seemed really dubious at first, but after a while he came to love it. There was one arguably minor gripe he had with it but it definitely did not crash at all. Two different people, two completely different experiences I guess.
Windows has this function too, you just can't access it with the out-of-the-box install, it requires a special addon to actually enable it. If I remember, what they did was write the code to implement it, then decided against it and removed any way to access it. Also, I'm pretty sure this was from Windows NT, so all NT based OSes potentially have this feature.
Wait, you're saying that paying slightly more money for a console that, as you said, is slightly improved doesn't make any sense?
I was on the Wish beta, one of those 80,000 I guess. It was a pretty good game, kind of the thing I expected UO2 to be before that was canned. The Wish development team was really cool as well, the kind of developers I would really want making an MMO I'm addicted to. During the beta they had, of course, many different events and stuff to serve as a server stress test. Our guild was actually integrated into the story line due to the size of the guild and number of active players. Such a fun game, even if the graphics were a little less impressive than most, and there were still bugs to be worked out. Waht game DOESN'T have those nowadays, especially MMOs!
You're making this statement assuming that people in Korea actually BUY video games.
Major graphical sacrifices? It could be the size of the enviroment I suppose, but it could also be the fact that Rockstar used the same graphics engine for III, VC, and SA. I really don't think that engine was built to sustain that kind of size, and I'd be really surprised if Rock* didn't build their GTA IV engine with larger outdoor environments mixed with indoro environments in mind. By this point I would expect every building in GTA IV to be enterable, without load times, with more than just the same three or four interiors. Then again, maybe I am giving Rockstar too much credit.
Anyone remember Death Race and its media frenzy? The media had the same reaction as it did with Mortal Kombat and other games, only instead of being actual bloody violence, it was a car running over vaguely stick-like shapes. The media and legislation now is the same as it was back in the 1970's, but it's still interesting to look at recent events I suppose.
See, your whole point is invalidated by you saying that I *could* have put it in an account somewhere and earned extra money. I didn't. Therefore you cannot say that I paid more money than I should have in the scam. I was going to spend $50 + tax. I spent exactly $50+tax, and I did not take it from my savings account to do so, I took it from my non-interest-earning checking account. Also, you can't just pull numbers like 7 months out of thin air, I preordered it two days before release. The time it would take to calculate how much was "lost in inflation" in those two days is insignificant. Your theory is a sound one if you mention that it is potentially costing more, but you cannot deal in absolutes like that.
I guess I forgot to pay interest that time I preordered Civ IV.
If not for that preorder, I wouldn't have had the game on release day, and since I love the series I wanted it as soon as I could get my grubby hands on it. It's not always a scam, the only scam associated with preordering is the jerks at gamestores who try to pressure you into it because they have a quota to fill.