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| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23274 |  RedRay (462) Feb 05, 2011 - 12:08 am
| The previous console generation sold 200 million units (Xbox/PS2/Gamecube).
This generation (360/PS3/Wii) we're already at 190 million units and that number will certainly exceed 300 million units prior to the next generation arriving. Add to that a higher ASAP for hardware for this generation and higher unit and ASAPs for software and it's easy to see that the market has grown. None of the Big Three consider themselves to have lost this generation and THAT was unexpected. Most previous iterations saw someone get killed off or at least mortally wounded. Flag this | Edit this post |
| Siteseeing Link » /news/siteseeingarticle.asp?searchid=4649 | RedRay (462) Feb 04, 2011 - 11:26 am
| | Horrible implementation. Mounted off the center of mass of the weapon so it throws weapon balance off. Sticks out a lot from the weapon - easy to break or bend the mount when it bangs into a vehicle door or other real weapon obstacle. And batteries. No one likes carrying extra weight. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23274 | RedRay (462) Feb 04, 2011 - 10:36 am
| | The result for this generation of consoles? The one that no one expected of course! The market grew so big and so fast that it could accommodate not just two, but all three consoles. Nobody was predicting that in the beginning of 2005. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23241 | RedRay (462) Jan 22, 2011 - 08:10 pm
| In our society, you have to be a winner. Losing politely doesn't cut it. But not everyone can win. The solution? Call everyone a winner, even if their actions aren't quite up to the necessary standard. When I graduated from HS I laugh/snickered at the concept of a HS graduation party. Nowadays they have kindergarden graduation parties. Everyone is celebrated as a winner.
The problem of course is that concept breaks down in two player(team) compet*tive gaming. Hence rage quitting rears its head. But this isn't really a new phenomenon either. I remember the first day I played Unreal multiplayer. After the start of every match, all my teammates would vanish and I was left fighting 1 vs. 4 or something to that effect. After around 4 games of this, I finally got on a roll and despite being outnumbered, killed 3 of the 4 opponents. The last one quit. LOL. Internet anonymity - the fuel for bad behavior. Flag this | Edit this post |
| Siteseeing Link » /news/siteseeingarticle.asp?searchid=4639 | RedRay (462) Dec 23, 2010 - 09:45 pm
| | Regardless of whether you think that Assange is in the right or wrong, this is going to end up badly for him. Very badly. The US government will get him in the end. Again, rightly or wrongly, the US government is relentless and untiring in its pursuit of those it feels have wronged it. But I get the feeling Assange isn't so much interested in longevity. I think he has somewhat of a martyr complex in him and would love to go down in a blaze of glory. Which will probably happen. The blaze part. Not so sure about the glory part... Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23197 | RedRay (462) Dec 18, 2010 - 12:06 pm
| | And still nothing about fixing how the social policies you choose didn't provide the benefits that are supposed to come with them. No fix about how researching Animal Husbandry and building a pasture is inferior to simply putting up a farm. Lots of work still do to with this game. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23192 | RedRay (462) Dec 15, 2010 - 06:18 pm » Edited on Dec 15, 2010 - 06:19 pm
| | Bah, we've discussed this multiple times previously. PC gaming isn't dead. PC gaming is growing much faster than console gaming. It's just not happening in the US/EU. The fastest growing gaming market in the world is China and its essentially 100% PC gaming. #2 is Korea and again its almost 100% PC gaming. There are over a dozen gaming companies in the PRC/ROK with market caps greater than Electronic Arts. They figured out how to develop and sell games that appeal to customers dollars despite piracy. ERTS didn't. That's why ERTS is now an also-ran. Blizzard alone out of all the Western devs also figured it out. That's why they're still #1. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23187 | RedRay (462) Dec 12, 2010 - 01:48 pm
| | Hmm. would have been nice to see some ingame footage, even if pre-rendered. As it is, one is left to wonder if they are going to use the same engine from Oblivion/F3/NewVegas. That was a state of the art 3D engine when it was released but now it's showing its age. With NPC conversations in particular you lose all sense of realism. Flag this | Edit this post |
| Siteseeing Link » /news/siteseeingarticle.asp?searchid=4628 | RedRay (462) Nov 18, 2010 - 04:03 pm
| Deflation has no real negative effects on the economy if, as per your own provision, that rate of price change is predictable.
Even your made up example of 15% deflation and interest rates floored at zero can be obviated by a borrower - they simply borrow in a non-dollar currency and use a currency swap to bring the foreign country's real interest rate to the US without currency risk. Smaller borrowers without access to the capital markets will have that service provided to them by intermediaries. Banks for example have offered this service to retail customers in Europe. Flag this | Edit this post |
| Siteseeing Link » /news/siteseeingarticle.asp?searchid=4628 | RedRay (462) Nov 15, 2010 - 10:01 pm » Edited on Nov 15, 2010 - 10:02 pm
| Sort of funny in a Jon Stewart, let's make fun of other people sort of way.
The real answer is this: inflation (or deflation) is innately neither good nor bad. Rather it is good for some people and bad for others. In particular, inflation is good for people with large amounts of debt or negative net wealth. Inflation allows those people to repay their debts later with easier to obtain money. Inflation is bad for people who have lent money or have large positive net wealth, since inflation reduces the real value of their loan assets. Correspondingly deflation is bad for debtors and good for lenders.
So why then does the Fed want to inflate? The US is a net debtor. Period.
Making fun of the Fed can indeed be funny. But claiming as this video does that inflation is just flat out bad and the Fed is dumb for wanting it simply makes the video maker look like he flunked Economics 101. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23147 | RedRay (462) Nov 15, 2010 - 09:51 pm
| If you have a product with low (effectively zero in the case of digitally distributed video games) marginal cost, then it is quite logical to push down prices as long as the product continues to have price elasticity. This is basic economics. But you see this happen infrequently because most software companies are run by people with almost no training in economics. The last time we saw a big software company exploit this low/zero marginal cost characteristic, it was a guy called Bill Gates and he created an empire.
I don't think THQ will get that far because there is more product differentiation between entertainment t*tles than there was between MS-DOS and PC-DOS or even Word vs. WordPerfect. But still, it's a logical move to make. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23121 | RedRay (462) Oct 30, 2010 - 09:37 pm
| | They've got a long road ahead. Seems like they didn't fix any of the social policy bugs (half of them don't provide the benefit they are supposed to). But it took years and two expansions before Civ4 reached its current state of greatness, so... Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23109 | RedRay (462) Oct 14, 2010 - 10:43 pm
| Having worked in and managed large groups in large organizations, I can tell you two things for certain: 1) they can get really irrationally screwed up and 2) whether or not they achieve that dubious status can not be accurately predicted by a low level grunt, much less one from a completely different team.
The Old Republic team probably has 500+ people on it. Zero chance a low level grunt sees enough of the project to be able to accurately predict it's success or lack thereof. That's not to say it will succeed. It may indeed tank spectacularly. Just that this guy doesn't know one way or another. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23051 | RedRay (462) Sep 05, 2010 - 12:51 am
| | Well at least he was man enough to take the blame. Hopefully he'll learn something from what has happened. Historically they've done a good job. But we've all seen plenty of dev/publishers with a good track record have a bad day....and then keep on having them. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23029 | RedRay (462) Aug 26, 2010 - 10:11 pm » Edited on Aug 26, 2010 - 10:13 pm
| It doesn't bother me at all if a dev/publisher releases a patch on the day of release, or a couple of days later. It does bug me if even AFTER the patch the game crashes repeatedly, has balance issues or simply won't get past the pre-game loading screen (as is the case for many users with ATI Radeon cards).
We're seeing this type of behavior from a lot of PC strategy game devs that previously have put out stellar t*tles - Paradox, St*rdock, Creative Assembly. Very disappointing. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=22933 | RedRay (462) Jul 16, 2010 - 10:47 pm
| | I agree Jacob. I just plunked down for a 5850 today. The 460 GTX 1GB is also a great card (about 90% the performance of the 5850 for about 85% of the price). By the end of the year you'll be able to get performance levels equal to each of these cards for lower prices. Parallelism works for graphics rendering which is why we continue to get Moore's Law helping raise the performance/price ratio. Too bad parallelism mostly fails for CPU tasks... Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=22726 | RedRay (462) Apr 25, 2010 - 02:40 pm
| Must....milk...the....user....base...
Sometimes you just need to remind yourself that "fan" is short for "fanatic". If someone wants to pay $150 for that short bill of goods, then they are definitely a "fan". Personally I couldn't even drag myself past the halfway point for ODST, despite having enjoyed 1, 2 & 3 immensely. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=22721 | RedRay (462) Apr 21, 2010 - 08:48 pm
| | AC was a great game. AC2 was horrible. And not due to billing problems. That's a lame excuse. There was no content in AC2 and the classes were incredibly unbalanced. There's a reason that AC2 closed all its servers so soon after launch. If Turbine is able to consumate its sale to WB, then good for them. But Turbine has a mixed record with its MMOs. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=22703 | RedRay (462) Apr 15, 2010 - 09:54 am
| | If the combat is FPS based but they still have the strategic overlay with the requesite building/management of weapons, facilities and troops, then I'd take a look. If the campaign is just a string of FPS missions in story telling mode, then it would be rather dull. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=22690 | RedRay (462) Apr 09, 2010 - 09:58 pm » Edited on Apr 09, 2010 - 09:58 pm
| I agree with many comments made in the review, including the overall score. But I think some aspects of the game were left out of the review that should be noted.
First, there is no multiplayer. There's the single player campaign and that's it.
Second, many, many parts of the game require the player to perform a set series of actions (aka console FPS gameplay) with very little prompting to the player that such actions are required. This dials up difficulty as the player repeatedly fails, reloads, attempts another solution, fails, reloads, etc. until finally the correct methadology is stumbled upon.
The combination of one & two (above) really reduces the replayability of the t*tle. Once you know the correct sequences, the game is actually rather easy (even on the hardest difficulty setting).
But the overall atmosphere of the game the first time you run through it is simply outstanding. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=22671 | RedRay (462) Apr 01, 2010 - 02:10 am » Edited on Apr 01, 2010 - 02:18 am
| | I don't think this is a feature that will get much traction in the market to be honest. I've used a multi-monitor setup for business purposes and that works great, but you can run those with a weanie video card. For gaming purposes it's not clear to me that a 3x1 or 3x2 setup should even use widescreen instead of old-style square monitors. And if you use widescreen monitors with a 3x1 setup, I think the outer monitors ought to be tilted inwards, which means that for LOS/sight perception accuracy the rendering engine needs to be changed. Too many variables, causing market fragmentation for what is already a niche market. Flag this | Edit this post |
| Siteseeing Link » /news/siteseeingarticle.asp?searchid=4555 | RedRay (462) Mar 22, 2010 - 12:42 am » Edited on Mar 22, 2010 - 12:42 am
| | The so-called "civilized" First World countries that r@ped and pillaged their way across four continents do provide health care to all citizens, but they ration it. No country provides health care with free prices AND unlimited quant*ty. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=22507 | RedRay (462) Feb 07, 2010 - 03:22 am
| Overall I'd agree with the score by the reviewer. Big picture plot not as good as in ME1 (I rate driving down that indoor corridor as the end plot is revealed to you in ME1 as the top gaming sequence in my 30 years of gaming), but story lines for NPCs are better. Over a dozen non-fatal bugs remain blocking certain side quests requiring you to reboot & retry to complete the quest. Planetary mining is worse than driving the Mako, and you'll do more of it. But combat is better in ME2 and the overall game is larger.
Bottom line: ME1 was the IMO the best video game of all time and if ME2 was half as good as ME1, it'd be the second best video game of all time. It passed that hurdle. Flag this | Edit this post |
| Siteseeing Link » /news/siteseeingarticle.asp?searchid=4550 | RedRay (462) Jan 26, 2010 - 08:36 am
| | It's not just that Republicans can't work with Democrats. The Democrats can't even work with Democrats. Even with the loss of the senate seat, the Democrats could still pass what amounts to their health care reform by having the House pass the Senate's version of the bill. That would avoid the House-Senate reconciliation process and send the bill straight to the President without a need to go back to the Senate. But the Dems in the House won't agree to pass the Senate's version. So back to square one. Can't say I'm surprised. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=22421 | RedRay (462) Dec 23, 2009 - 01:47 am
| | I think the time is right for Nvidia (or whomever) to enter the CPU market. Technologically the products have stabilized, and going forward the level of advancement is going to be pretty slow. That significantly reduces the advantage Intel gets from having a much bigger capex budget. But I think the Transmeta people may be the wrong personnel for the job. Having reached the effective ceiling in clock speed, the "smaller chip, faster speed" development strategies that Transmeta used are obsolete. Flag this | Edit this post |
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