If you’ve avoided it this long, you might as well buy one now. Yes, there are tweaked SKUs shipping soon with a couple of ok pack in games, but if the live stats are any indication, all you care about is Halo 3 online anyhow.
Here’s a quick list of crap to buy if you haven’t begun to Finish the Fight.
Xbox 360 Console Includes 20GB Hard Drive (with HDMI)
I’ve got two HD TVs in my house, and honestly I could give two shits about the HD format war thats waging strong. My intial hunch was the HD-DVD would trump Blu-Ray for 2 reasons: First, the combo disk sounds like a great idea; secondly, Sony pretty much sucks at inventing formats.
At any rate, the previaling logic was studio support would decide this in a timely fashion and we can carry on rebuying all the movies we just bought on DVD again and call it a day; this has not really been the case, with many studios supporting both, some flip flopping and changing their minds, and so on. Ultimately the studios are going to follow the units/money, not dictate a standard.
So who is going to nip this war in the bud? Walmart. Continue reading »
My prediction is you’re a retarded jackass, and you’re next game won’t sell half as many as Carmack’s.
Seriously though, console wars are bad enough, but there are still people that like fanning the PC vs console flame war? They are different experiences, good at different things. Done.
In 5 years, yes, it probably will be time for MS and Sony to “rethink” some stuff and release a new console. Hell, they will probably even use those fancy multicore chips Romero is screaming about. Christ, I feel more retarded for even thinking about this more than 2 minutes. Next.
While both CEOs insist they have a cordial relationship, Apple’s continued growth- as well as their recent jabs at Vista, has got to be something of a thorn in the Windows group side of late. Anti-Redmond propaganda is frequently seen in Cupertino, and the assault is rumored to get even more relentless as the launch of Leopard approaches.
In what many see as a jab back, Microsoft recently altered liscense terms, requiring Mac users looking to run Vista in Paralells to purchase more expensive flavors, such as business or Ultimate editions. No technical reasons for this exist; my personal opinion is MS simply wants to discourage the practice. With a virtualized copy of windows, MS’s dominant OS goes from being the magical software that makes the box work to merely a runtime environment required for some specific software applications. Not exactly the strongest foundation to build an empire upon.
In any event, look for both camps to beat their chest louder and louder once Leopard gets here. And if Microsoft somehow decides to fire a nastier shot back- which I am fairly certain they will if Leopard shoots out of the gate to glowing reviews, and the switch numbers keep growing, look for Apple to quit making witty banners for a second and fire back a gut shot of their own- iTunes for Ubuntu. Continue reading »
In any discussion of piracy, you’re going to encounter two camps of people: those that staunchly refuse to condone the practice, and either go without or find open source alternatives to pakcages they cannot afford; or the guy who thinks “information deserves to be free” and refuses to pay for jack shit. Like most things though, the vast majority of normal folks fall somewhere in the vast middle ground inbetween the extremes.
Casual copying takes many forms- maybe a student wants to learn an app, or a designer wants to work on his work projects at home when he calls in “sick”. It could be even more innocent, perhaps someone has switched platforms and doesnt want to have to reinvest thousands of dollars into digital goods he’s already purchased just because he got sick of dealing with a particular OS. Whatever the particulars, we all know there are hundreds of thousands of unliscensed applications floating around out in the wild, to the detriment of everyone- publishers can’t get paid, users can’t get support, it’s no good.
My suspicion is that many- if not most users- would jump at the opprotunity to “go legit”, but then they see the CEO of Adobe justify the $1700-$2500 price of admission to the latest creative suite by stating “Our customer is not typically price sensitive”. At which point desire to be a legit customer gets replaced with a desire to tell adobe to kiss their ass as they trek off to piratebay to grab it for free.
Is there a quick fix to this? I think so. Continue reading »
Not to keep grabbing stuff off Ars, but given the high amount of interest in the multitouch piece I wrote earlier, Ars is reporting Apple is seeking to hire a multi touch display engineer.
…a listing for “Senior Panel Process Engineer” was posted to a “widely-known job site.” The description for said job listing reads that the candidate will “lead the engineering activities to develop the new process and design for the multi-touch panel used in Apple products.”
The remainder of the job listing reportedly asks for someone who can design the multitouch panel from concept to launch, as well as develop the technology in such a way that would benefit both performance and functionality.
How this pans out is anyone’s guess, but I still stand by what I wrote last week.
Over the weekend, V and I randomly stopped in Best Buy to browse around. We stumbled across the new HP Touch Smart PC, and man is that thing ever something. Aside form being a pretty snappy all in one with some nice media center features, the key element is a large, glossy touch screen. And it’s awesome. Simple task like launching appsoff the desktop feels neat- almost fun.The version of IE it’s loaded with has a special, wider scroll bar that’s easier to “grab”. We both really liked playing with the machine, and when we walked away the thought on our mind was “How is Apple going to respond to this”? Continue reading »
I know it’s a touchy subject in many circles, but I try to approach the great “debate” from a non fanboy perspective- I have a 10+ year history with Macs (and a Power Computing clone), and spent at least 5 years using both platforms side by side, though I’ve been using a PC exclusively at home for a while. But after looking at what Vista has to offer compared to Leopard (hell, even Tiger), the time has come to draw a line in the sand.
Ironically, the transition to Intel is probably the catalyst for getting me to go back. The cost issue is much less a factor now than in 2000, and as much as I love getting a truckload of parts from NewEgg, I find myself craving something that just works. There comes a point where replacing fans to get a couple extra FPS in a game is just not fun anymore.
Read on to see my major factors for making this decision: Continue reading »
I spent the morning reading some pretty unflattering blogs about the PS3. We’ve known about the shortcomings with Sony’s half-assed network “plan”, but the inability to use third part universal remotes with blu-ray video playback was news to me. (I wont even touch the inability to network it with a PC for now). A friend on a board asks “How did Sony spend this much time and money and still come up short”?
In a nutshell, I think the answer might boil down to “Japan sucks at the internet”. Continue reading »
We decided to have a Wii launch party at 1:30am. People were cool with the late start time, and we’ve got a big space and a couple decent widescreen displays. The only issue was securing the Wii’s at 12:01 am Sunday. This meant driving around with cellphones on Friday night, before ending up at Meijer some 40 miles away. They had 17 units, and we just made it in time to get 4. They gave us wristbands and told us we couldn’t leave the store (except to go out front and smoke. After last years 360 fiasco, this was heaven We got our machines at midnight and hustled back just as our guests were startin to arrive. Pics after the break. Continue reading »
