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| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=20458 |  RedRay (324) May 13, 2008 - 11:50 am
| | Pretty funny how they had to qualify that statement with "in the western world". In Asia they had a MMO surpass 1 million SIMULTANEOUS ONLINE connects about three years ago, and now its commonplace. WoW must be nearing that level as well. Of course those are not in beta. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=20446 | RedRay (324) May 07, 2008 - 03:29 pm
| | You hit the nail right on the head. Single player gameplay is always better with a large number of moderately detailed mobs onscreen than with a single super detailed mob. id didn't ration their polygon count appropriately and as a result could only have 1 or 2 mobs. And then they tried to offset that by having the mob spawn behind you in a dark alcove AFTER you pass it. Yeah, that's really good gameplay....ugh. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=20352 | RedRay (324) Apr 10, 2008 - 01:54 pm
| | I dunno if this is a good idea for Nvidia. In the short run I can't see this being a successful product given how much obsolescence exists in the Cyrix CPU. And in the long run I think Nvidia needs to be spending its time and money figuring our how discrete GPUs are going to compete with Intel's multi-core CPU strategy for doing ray tracing. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=20346 | RedRay (324) Apr 09, 2008 - 02:22 pm
| | DRAM makers have been substantially hurt by the PC users not increasing the amount of DRAM per PC. And that in turn is linked to the 32bit address limit. Until the market moves to 64bit OSes, DRAM makers will be hurting. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=20338 | RedRay (324) Apr 08, 2008 - 01:22 pm » Edited on Apr 08, 2008 - 01:24 pm
| Times will remain tough for AMD. Intel will continue to use its by now familiar compet*tive response: lower prices in market segments where AMD is compet*tive and compensate with higher prices on newly introduced technology in market segments where AMD is weak.
AMD made a tremendous strategic error by acquiring ATI. At the time AMD wanted to insure that its fabs would run at full capacity. But all it really wound up doing was acquiring a new compet*tor - nVidia, one just a vicious and deadly as Intel. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=20198 | RedRay (324) Mar 28, 2008 - 07:58 am
| | The risks of failure (for a console launch) are indeed much larger given the higher fixed costs. But on the other hand the worldwide game entertainment market has now grown by so much that there are enough customers to support FOUR (4) separate platforms (Wii,X360, PS3, PC). Ten years ago there was really only enough customers to support two (PS2, PC). Thus unless you believe that a single platform will monopolize the global market, I find it unlikely that either consoles or PCs will be eliminated. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=20034 | RedRay (324) Mar 18, 2008 - 08:40 am
| | My guess (and also hinted at in the article) is that these "failures" are mostly simply returns due to customer disappointment with the performance. The type of SSDs marketed to retail right now outperform conventional HDs only in a select set of operations and are slower on many tasks. To get a real performance benefit from SSDs you need 2 high end models in a RAID setup. Which isn't happening on laptops. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=19968 | RedRay (324) Mar 13, 2008 - 07:09 am
| You guys must have the memory span of a mouse. The PS3>X360 sales AND the X360 supply shortage is a US only issue. Much of this has to do with the price cuts (due to the plummeting US$) for the X360 in the UK, Euro zone, Canada, etc. Higher demand due to the price cuts have sucked down the X360 supply and that means less units for the US.
MSFT will adjust by increasing its order rate from contract manufacturers. Similarly Sony is probably going to adjust higher its order rate now that BR has officially won. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=19941 | RedRay (324) Mar 12, 2008 - 07:19 am » Edited on Mar 12, 2008 - 07:20 am
| It works for them because they have low budget t*tles with extremely long amounts of gameplay (100+ hrs per t*tle). They then combine that by shipping the game with only about 90% of the content. A download patch which requires game registration (and thus purchase) is available on the same day the game ships. This plus further "patches" supply the additional content. It's a good strategy that is customer friendly and appropriate for their business.
But it wouldn't work for a moment for a high cost t*tle with shorter gameplay. For example a console type shooter with 20 hours or so of gameplay would get killed with this business model as it is REALLY hard to add meaningful content as opposed to bug fixes only via patches on a shooter. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=19855 | RedRay (324) Mar 05, 2008 - 01:11 pm
| | But the studios did not want the additional development expenses that would have come along with multiple formats. The difference here vs. game devs is that the studios are fewer in number and thus even a small cabal of them can form a dominant enough majority that they can crown a winning format. Which isn't the case for game platforms. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=19855 | RedRay (324) Mar 05, 2008 - 10:49 am
| | Very interesting article, Particularly the part where Toshiba talks about using optical dives on PCs for TV consumption. The reporter however missed a golden opportunity to ask about whether the HD-DVD consortium had an chance to bid for Warner to go HD-DVD exclusive and how much that would have cost. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=19824 | RedRay (324) Mar 04, 2008 - 07:41 am
| | I'm sympathetic to this dev, but also at the same time contemptuous. After all did he not know piracy was a big issue in PC gaming BEFORE he released his t*tle? So to translate, what he's saying is, "I willingly walked into a gang bar and was mugged. It's not FAIR!". Sure it's not fair, but it's so PREDICTABLE. Eventually devs will learn to change their behavior in response to the ANTICIPATED bad behavior of others. Either that or die. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=19811 | RedRay (324) Mar 03, 2008 - 03:20 pm
| Chrispyski, I'm sure the backers of Duke Nukem Forever said exactly the same thing: "This CAN'T fail!!!". If it was so riskless, then they wouldn't even have needed investors, they could have walked to the bank and asked for a low interest rate loan. But as we all know, even sure things sometimes don't work out as intended. I will say this though, if it was a really, REALLY good opportunity, wouldn't YOU as an employee have been willing to work for less base pay and take some stock instead?
P.S. For some reason Chrispyski, there wasn't an Reply hotlink under your post and so I posted above your message (as I think occurred with you). One thing, I did you didn't tho: I inadvertantly clicked on "Flag this". Doh. My bad. By no means do I consider your post offensive. :) Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=19811 | RedRay (324) Mar 03, 2008 - 01:32 pm
| Why shouldn't the shareholders get the money? They took the risk. If the product had bombed and lost money, the shareholders would have lost the money and the employees would simply get another job.
Now IF, the workers had willingly accepted a smaller base pay and had accepted an ownership stake in the company (as I should mention is the case with most small companies), then the the workers do share some of the downside risk and WILL, since the product has been successful also get some of the upside benefit.
Which is as it should be. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=19671 | RedRay (324) Feb 20, 2008 - 12:53 pm
| | Molyneux is just another dev who doesn't GET IT. PC gaming and more importantly PC gaming REVENUE is growing rapidly. It's just not growing in North America and Europe. Let me translate his whining: "I'm a business person who hasn't adapted my products to take advantage of where the market is growing, so I'm gonna complain about customers not buying my products." Good luck buddy... Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=19444 | RedRay (324) Feb 07, 2008 - 09:57 am
| >a super-secret start-up company called Montalvo Systems is said to be designing a multi-core PC processor designed for laptops and ultraportables
Can you say Transmeta V2.0? Competing against Intel isn't just about comepting with their design team. Perhaps even more important is competing with Intel's fab capacity. Just ask poor AMD... Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=19356 | RedRay (324) Feb 01, 2008 - 07:31 am » Edited on Feb 01, 2008 - 07:31 am
| | I've said it before and I'll say it again: PC gaming is alive, well and growing. At least globally. But all of that growth is coming in China and Korea. Those are probably the #1 & #3 PC gaming markets right now, and headed to #1 & #2 within a year or so. Those are markets where console gaming have near zero market share. But if you are a PC gaming dev and your ti*les are not friendly to those markets, then yes, you will be making idiotic statements like this fellow from Epic. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=19342 | RedRay (324) Jan 31, 2008 - 11:19 am
| | Translation: We at Bethesda aren't going to throw $10 million down a rat hole developing a game that will be crippled by non-programming nitwits at a movie studio mandating what we can and can not include in a game at the 11th hour of development for a movie that has at least a 50% chance of bombing at the box office. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=19353 | RedRay (324) Jan 31, 2008 - 11:15 am
| We're not talking about making the game, we're talking about operating the online service. If Blizzard wants to use token based pay to play, which is how most online gamers in China are used to paying, then Blizzard can't run the online service - they simply don't have the retail footprint in China. That's why they partner up with a local.
Blizzard is the one Western software company that has figured out that the majority of PC gaming revenue comes from China+Korea. Those markets are the last bastion of console hostile gamers. Blizzard will make their games friendly to gamers in those markets. It's where the money is. Flag this | Edit this post |
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