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| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=10573 |  RedRay (334) Jun 06, 2006 - 03:32 pm
| | I can't see this being a real factor in the market. Perhaps for casual users this will be of interest, but those guys typically don't pay for their software anyways. They're running a duplicate copy of an old version of Office at best, and a direct pirated copy at worst. Most people that actually are willing to pay hundreds of dollars for multiple seats of Excel/Office need to have API support for 3rd party data feeds from the likes of Bloomberg, etc. And you aren't going to see that in Google. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=10567 | RedRay (334) Jun 06, 2006 - 03:21 pm
| | Where are INTC & AMD in this mess? The one subsystem that has extra processing power to spare is the CPU in a dual core setup. It's cheap, its functional and it's already there in most new PCs. By abdicating their traditional role as technology evangalists, the CPU makers are basically ceding market share within the box to GPU or PPU guys. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=10547 | RedRay (334) Jun 05, 2006 - 12:23 pm
| | What you are seeing is the diminishing returns to new technology and the corresponding hunt for alternative ways to maintain or at least come close to the old power growth curve. We've already seen this in the CPU subsector. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=10547 | RedRay (334) Jun 05, 2006 - 06:35 am
| | Sorry if it was in the article and I missed it, but it would be nice in hardware reviews it it was stated about how big a power supply is needed to run a system with these types of cards. For a review of an entry level card, I could see how that would be superfluous. But for these high end cards that draw a lot of power, it's an issue. I have older PCs with 300W power supplies. Can it run this card? Would be nice to know... Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=10534 | RedRay (334) Jun 03, 2006 - 08:29 am » Edited on Jun 03, 2006 - 08:30 am
| | Well a typical amount of time from the game code going gold to retail release might be a month. That's the time it would take to finalize doc*umentation, print it and the packaging, make disks, as*semble components and ship to retail. For a larger product (ex. a Windows version release) the timeframe might be longer. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=10513 | RedRay (334) Jun 01, 2006 - 06:45 pm
| | From a business standpoint backwards compatibility is at its most important at the time of launch. As the product ages backward compatibility becomes less and less important. It would be pretty surprising if they ceased efforts on it only 8 months after product launch tho. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=10504 | RedRay (334) Jun 01, 2006 - 10:16 am » Edited on Jun 01, 2006 - 06:48 pm
| | Again, I'll wait and buy them all when they come as a bundle. It's not like I've already done all the quests in the game anyway. So why pay more now just to lengthen the queue of stuff I haven't yet done? Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=10494 | RedRay (334) May 31, 2006 - 07:13 pm
| As a PC user, PC gamer and PC fan, I can still take his words as an objective criticism. Let's face it for many (most?) people the cost/value ratio for entertainment applications is higher for the PC than for a console. The sole remaining gaming advantage that the PC holds is the greater power of its interface, in particular the keyboard over a gamepad. That's really about it.
Where the PC does have a tremendous advantage is in non-gaming applications. Do you really want to key in your TurboTax data into a console using a gamepad? Ugh! I therefore find it tactically naive for Sony to think that the console can replace the PC in the home.
As an aside, if I was a strategist for a PC firm, I'd be more worried about Wii than PS3. Wii directly attacks the one advantage the PC has over consoles, its interface. If the PC loses that, then it really will be game over for PC gaming. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=10485 | RedRay (334) May 31, 2006 - 07:06 pm
| | Honestly, I really could care less how a computer looks. It just sits under my table after all. As for the laptops, I'm not a big fan of the heavy desktop replacement type computer. I went that route back in 2000 and all that happens is that within a year you are using a newer, faster desktop and the laptop gets relegated to mobile use - and then you wind up hating how much it weighs for the next 3 years. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=10485 | RedRay (334) May 31, 2006 - 03:17 pm
| | $8500 for Quad SLI. Down from $10K for the Renegade. And those were with slower GPUs. Seems like $7k is a possibility by the 4th quarter. Maybe $6000 (again with faster updated GPUs) by the middle of 1st quarter 2007. Right in time for my move to Vista. That doesn't sound too bad actually. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=10476 | RedRay (334) May 31, 2006 - 10:29 am
| Thing is, they'll never sell 4mm copies of Episode 3. The very nature of these episodic releases is that you automatically market to a smaller niche with each follow-up - because only those that bought all prior releases will buy the new one. So sales of Episode 3 will be lower than that of Episode 2 which will be lower than that of Episode 1.
Honestly 18 hrs of gameplay for $60 seems steep for me. At least with HL2 there was the additional value from multi-player content. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=10476 | RedRay (334) May 31, 2006 - 10:25 am
| Thing is, they'll never sell 4mm copies of Episode 3. The very nature of these episodic releases is that you automatically market to a smaller niche with each follow-up - because only those that bought all prior releases will buy the new one. So sales of Episode 3 will be lower than that of Episode 2 which will be lower than that of Episode 1.
Honestly 18 hrs of gameplay for $60 seems steep for me. At least with HL2 there was the additional value from multi-player content. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=10457 | RedRay (334) May 30, 2006 - 01:21 pm » Edited on May 30, 2006 - 01:22 pm
| Actually sounds like I was just about right. No money to Atari = zero incentive for them to continue with premium modules. Regardless of whatever money is owed/not owed, as people are finding out, there is always more hardball to play. If Atari is late on payments and Bioware wants to notch it up a level they can now release premium modules w/o Atari's permission citing Atari having breached its contract. Atari can then attempt to screw Bioware on NWN2, etc.
Or Bioware could have just short circuited the whole process by taking what should have been Atari's cut off premium modules and giving only half to Atari and keeping half to offset against receivables. That would have kept Atari in the financial loop while making some progress on the bad debt.
I will say however that your claim about non-payment of trade receivables is dubious. Not that I doubt Atari is in financial difficulty. That is well known. However before defaulting on trade receivables, any firm that ships product to retail will default on everything, and I mean EVERYTHING else, including payroll. Because if you are defaulting on trade receivables, retail outlets will not prepay money for your first shipment of a new t*i*tle. And we have seen no reports of Atari failing on its payroll. Moreover Atari is current on its revolver. Both signs it would not (yet) have defaulted on trade receivables. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=10457 | RedRay (334) May 30, 2006 - 05:50 am
| | My guess is that the % revenue split to Atari from premium NWN modules is lower than the % revenue split to Atari from NWN2. If BioWare really wanted to continue with the premium NWN sales they could have offered to match the % revenue split to Atari. Then again for all we know, perhaps they are already negotiating with Atari behind the scenes. Flag this | Edit this post |
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