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| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=20198 |   Swatt (10) Mar 28, 2008 - 01:34 pm
| I think he’s half right. I believe that ultimately a Unified gaming/pc platform will eventually take hold. Sony and Nintendo will fight and fight but because Microsoft is already in the PC end and the 360 is doing well, we are likely to see things eventually shift to a Microsoft centric gaming space. I think that to put an arbitrary date on it like 10 years is ambitions. This could easily take twice that or half that depending on what the market does and what new technologies arrive from the hardware folks.
To simply say that "consoles will die" is a bad way of explaining that we are moving toward a more unified system.
The only thing holding the unified system back is the fact that it means there will be 2 big losers who are likely to be Sony and Nintendo. Nintendo could easily make the switch to developing peripherals and software for a new unified gaming platform, but Sony would be up sh!t creek since they only do the hardware side. Needless to say, unless someone wants to write some really big checks to Nintendo and Sony things aren't going to change that quick.
Quick note on a unified system. It is VERY pro-consumer. No more exclusive titles. Fewer compatibility issues. Spending $900 on a single system/pc/media center/gaming device in a 3 - 5 year period instead of 200 - 600 per system + whatever PC stuff you keep buying. I dunno, but sounds pretty attractive to me... Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=19818 | Swatt (10) Mar 06, 2008 - 03:17 pm
| The group of us that put it on were from all walks of life including somone who was in marketing and another person who worked at the cable company in our area. We got some really good free advertising that way. Otherwise it was a lot of flyers, posters, and getting "in" with the local gamestop so we could get them to help promote us.
Ultimately, the marketing side of things was hugely frustrating. Your best bet will likely be your local news station and local newspaper. If you can get a couple of "articles" out of them in the weeks leading up to your event then you will reach a lot of people. Getting an online forum set up to help cultivate a community helps too. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=19818 | Swatt (10) Mar 04, 2008 - 09:43 am
| I've never been to any lan with more than 200 people. I used to organize one in my area and the most we ever had was right about 200. They are a lot of fun but a ton of work.
I'd really like to make it to PAX sometime, but I live in the midwest and can neither afford the time off, gas, plane ticket, or other transportation necessary to get out there. Also being married with a full time job makes it tough as well.
The demographis of the United states are a little tricky to do a large lan. Most "countries" that have really big lans are typically about 1/20th the size of the united states. A better solution would be about 4 regional lans instead. Kinda a tour type thing. Flag this | Edit this post |
| Matrix Blog Link » /matrix/blog.asp/61831/301 | Swatt (10) Mar 19, 2007 - 10:45 am
| The original article actually included a section on the triplehead2go from matrox, but i didn't have near the time to polish that section to the calibur of the rest of the article. In fact, the rest of the article didn't even get as much time as it deserved. I won't lie that I didn't double check my numbers and that the original test setup included Half life 2, F.E.A.R., BF2, and UT2004 (the latter not supporting widescreen natively) not to mention other resolutions, but given the amount of time I had to commit to the article, its overall quality suffered.
Thanks again to everyone for reading. Flag this | Edit this post |
| Matrix Blog Link » /matrix/blog.asp/61831/301 | Swatt (10) Mar 14, 2007 - 08:24 pm » Edited on Mar 14, 2007 - 08:33 pm
| Hey Guys, Thanks for the comments.
Ag4life, I actually took price and size into account when selecting resolutions and panels (also that my friend had the widescreen model while I own the standard model.) What I found was that for the price, these two resolutions were the most common native resolutions. With the verticle resolution being so close to the same, it made the most sense to keep the tests simple and only do these common resolutions.
Initially I had intended to run in many resolutions including comparisons in 1280 x 768 to 1024 x 768 (which would have made for a much better test) but I didn't have the time to spend working on getting the programs to run properly in these resolutions.
Trogdor, I agree that there are many other perfectly valid resolutions to choose from, however, these resolutions were the native resolutions of the panels chosen and also are very common resolutions among other panels of this size and price.
Also, and sadly, I do not have the resources to test other hardware as this is my system and the only one I have with a PCI express video card. I could have used a 9700, 5900, and 6600GT all agp cards with a 2500+ CPU, but that would have been far too involved and a relatively invalid test when it comes to new games.
I would have loved to test more games and more resolutions, but the simple fact of the matter is that I didn't have the time or resources. I am completely aware that there is room for improvement with the article, but I'm afraid that this was all I could muster under the circumstances.
I probably could have included more information about the difficulties and choices I made within the article itslef. Maybe that would have helped ;-)
Thanks again everyone for the comments. Flag this | Edit this post |
| Matrix Blog Link » /matrix/blog.asp/61831/198 | Swatt (10) Mar 03, 2007 - 08:08 am » Edited on Mar 03, 2007 - 08:26 am
| Thanks for the Comments xts, I believe you’re missing the point. Competition in games is what drives people to do better. It’s also a lot of fun. No where in the article did I say that competition was bad, only that it should be thru real skill with the game and not with exploitative behavior.
In a way your comments were extremely accurate in that games are currently rewarding bad behavior. For a long time the Honor System in WoW allowed for (and even encouraged) higher level or more experienced players to continuously exploit weaker or lower level players with no form or punishment whatsoever. I’m not talking about evenly matched players here but rather players that out leveled and out geared their opponents to make their victories a sure thing. The Gear discrepancy in original WoW and BG’s were outright crippling to the game and Blizzard clearly got the message from the community which is why many changes were brought about in BC.
In fact, other companied and many newer games like Battlefield 2 and 2142 are including much more robust systems for tracking stats other than straight kill counts. Unfortunately, this led to more exploitation in the system with point farming and such but as I indicated in the article some people will do whatever it takes to get ahead. The fact of the matter is that game developers are looking at these aspects and making changes to the way scores are measured only supports the idea the elitism and elitist behavior is a growing problem that threatens online gaming.
It’s really a touchy subject and there are a lot of different views to be taken into account. It ended up being a much more difficult topic to write about than I originally had predicted. I’m moderately pleased with the end result and sincerely hope people don’t take it for a rant rather than a serious article about a serious issue (in my opinion).
Thanks again for the comments everyone. Flag this | Edit this post |
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