Frenetic Pony

I mean look at this shit, stop just rooting for Nintendo and read this: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-05-13-nintendo-two-years-away-from-redefining-video-game-platform-iwata Really? Ok, yeah, you're going to save the Wii-U by just magically popping out the next Pokemon. Right. "We have plans" it reminds me of George R.R. Martin the South Park Black Friday stuff. "We have great plans. They're coming, oh don't worry they're coming. No seriously, stop asking more questions, big things are coming, I promise." Maybe if the fans, aka most people on this thread, were as logical and honest with Nintendo as Microsoft's fans were, they might be inclined to listen. I don't want Nintendo to die. I like competition. But "believing" in Nintendo isn't going to magically wipe away half a billion dollars in losses with no defined plan to turn it around other than optimism.

Posting that (yes people use it for productivity, ok it was just too specific of an example!) Regardless, posting that made me realize something. People, just... everyone seems too much of a fan of Nintendo. Far too enamored to ever believe Nintendo screwed up. No one has had trouble calling out Microsoft on it's bullshit, and the One has probably been saved from a Wii-U or worse fate by it. But no one suggests giving up the damned stupid tablet controller for Nintendo, no one. People triumphantly announce that Kinect shouldn't forced on people, but no one thinks of this for Nintendo.... it's useless! It's a useless, expensive, unnecessary thing. They could ditch it and drop the Wii-U price by $75 and probably salvage the whole thing. And this, really, is why I predict Nintendo is just going to keep sliding. There are just, absolute blinders on everyone, up to Saturo Iwata, that Nintendo is somehow "different". That they somehow don't compete against Sony and Microsoft. That somehow smartphones haven't eaten into their handheld market. Every time you say that all people can say is "Nuh uh! That's not true, people still buy 3DS's." Newsflash: It will sell less than the DS when the world is richer than it was a decade ago and the video game market has grown substantially, meaning it should have sold more. So yes, smartphones have eaten away at it. But it's all "Nuh uh, Nintendo will be around forever. Nuh uh Nintendo didn't make a stupid controller even though no one can think of use for it. Nuh uh, Nintendo's investors are all so invested in the company that they will bankrupt themselves just to keep Nintendo alive! I know it, I believe it." Even Iwata seems to believe it. And until that's gone, until Nintendo's magical fanboy distortion field is gone, and they can make rational decisions like sporting a good online infrastructure, and ditching losing prospects like their tablet controller, and etc. then I'm going to say they are going to just slide down the hole. This is why I say they need a new CEO. Someone that can act rationally, someone that can actually think of these things. But right now their big plan is to bring out another Mario Kart, another game that will inevitably be called "not as good as Mario Kart 64" a game that today would be launched on mobile for $3, but they'll charge $60 for the sequel, and no one will question them, because they're Nintendo and even as they post continual losses they can't actually make a mistake.

For concentrating man! Geeze you just hate thinking Nintendo is wrong. Humans can only concentrate on one thing at a time, very few people can actually "multitask". For primary use, programmers are the primary people that actually use two screens, and that's just to display more information on one task, and that's side by side. Unless a game is so unengaging you can just look away without bothering to another screen then it's not happening. And if it did happen that wouldn't be a very good game right? They've had 18 months+ lead development time to come up with something. Microsoft dropped the Kinect after 7 but you're still clinging to the Wii-U's second screen after all this time?

Second screens are used, primarily by programmers. Really if it was such a good idea why wouldn't we have done it before on the PC right? It's not like having 2 screens available for a game hasn't been around for a while. On a side note, just for the hell of it, I'm also predicting Sony's picture division will be spun off. Or rather should be spun off. I mean, Amazing Spiderman 2 may well... or rather will lose money after the like 200 million dollar marketing is taken into account. And "Angry Birds" the movie, Popeye... I mean wtf? You don't have to be Amazing (cough) to do well in Hollywood these days (Cough, Michael Bay, Bob Orci, Cough). Just give people the stupid crap they want, which is apparently a movie where sci-fi gobbledy goop gets talked about and then something blows up in CG. Not an outdated, sexist comic strip. Though admittedly, the "sci-fi nonsense + explosions" may burn itself out this year between Spiderman, Godzilla, X-men, Tom Cruise lives forever by sucking the souls out of people that watch his sci-fi movies, Transformers: Michael Bay's mountain of coke needs to be bigger, Jupiter "Who keeps giving these siblings money" Ascending, Guardians of the "Marvel itself will burn out eventually, all these movies are starting to blur together" Galaxy, Earth to "we stole the plot to ET" Echo, Dawn of the "This movie might suck cause they've not given it any advertising budget" Planet of the Apes, "WTF is this movie even" aka Lucy, The (totally not riffing off the success of Hunger Games) Maze Runner, and let's not forget Ninja "So much cocaaaaaaine for Michael Bay!" Turtles. I'll even do you one and remove the "for kids" and "for dumbass angsty teens" one to keep this "OMG Avengers made all the money!" genre pure. That's still 11 movies, almost 1 a month, and far more than 1 a month for the summer where most of these are.

You can no longer run. We are all going to die

Just predicting that if their next console isn't a hit, well. I don't go in for... media fun. Or rather I think it's fun to try to be accurate, and not about the obvious. That would be boring to predict the sky is blue. And I'm not saying Sony is doing well... but at least they're turning around, while NIntendo slides down the deep hole. Which wouldn't be bad so bad if they weren't seemingly content to slide down while making decisions I can't agree are going to turn things around. Heck people want Microsoft to sell of the Xbox division, and that's doing a lot better (in some ways) than Nintendo is. I just want to see some sign that Nintendo will actually turn it around, like AMD or Sony. They're doing what they can, Nintendo's strategy is "let's make the Wii again but for poor people!" I mean, it's not Bear-Sterns. But the world isn't a kind place to single business companies who's only business is failing. If you're a billionaire are you really going to watch your money be thrown down the toilet to keep betting on someone that fail continuously? If they can make something somehow clever... which I don't think they can then I'll be happy to say they are fine. I just don't see anything though.

There's been something huge bothering me about people talking about Nintendo on the internet. And that's somehow the impression that Nintendo is a small privately owned company existing just for the heck of it like Mojang is. Well, it's not. It's a publicly owned company and guess what happens to publicly owned companies that continue to lose money, they're sold! Or even dissolved\sold piecemeal entirely if they have as much money on hand as Nintendo does. Investors aren't going to sit there and watch what is ostensibly THEIR money being washed down the drain just for sake of keeping a failing company alive. Which is why when I say Nintendo will have to turn it around soon to survive, I actually mean that.

It could happen at any time, any moment. You need to know.

Ok.... I don't mind CG. I love CG. I love learning how its done, I love discussing in detail how to try to reproduce offline CG in realtime. Buuuuuuut. http://www.aintitcool.com/node/67267 Gaaaaah! I want to see it so bad. So bad! Screw being too cool for school. I want to get excited, I like getting excited. That's half the fun. GIMME!

Excerpt from discussion: South Africa "Ahhh... err. Yes. Autonomus killbots are t- good for everybody! Especially the HK-9 model. Very good model. So polite. Would never shoot you as long as you co- ahm. Er. That is to say it's very good. We should, build more of them! Lots more. Lots and lots more. All the HK-9 models. And... not, those filthy, HK-10's which aren't really even an upgrade anyway? Of course they'r- I mean- Oh god someone help it's going to-" *Blam! Edit- Blinky wants to be your friend

I'd love to someday see what Project Titan was as it went along. Like an hour long GDC talk about the entire project is something I'd probably be absolutely riveted too. But the most interesting thing that I can see is Day Z. It kind of expanded on the already existing idea of large/persistent multiplayer rpg servers set up for NWN and Freelancer. And now Star Citizen and Destiny have taken that next step of even more seamlessly integrating that stuff so players don't have to bother. No shards/huge server infrastructure/etc. Just on demand smaller scale stuff that also keeps worst case scenarios really manageable, like 100 players max for SC and probably 16 for Destiny. You also don't have to design you entire game like it was built for weird ultra wide hippos, which makes all MMOs have uber wide lanes for travel and all kind of look the same.

It's 4 blocks from my grandmothers house you insensitive clod! But I've not gone in... maaaaybe a decade or more. Even back then it was really in need of a complete overhaul, something I'd guess it doesn't have the money for. I remember watching "Dawn of the Planet of Apes" and laughing at all the zoo scenes that supposedly take place in SF. Because they used Vancouver's zoo, and it is waaaaaayyyy too nice a place to be mistaken for SF's zoo. I suppose the best thing you could say about it, from what I remember, is that it's retro. The lion house looks like something conceived and built during the late 1800's by a bunch of British imperialists, who I could imagine standing around and saying "oh yes, bagged that one in Kenya old boy."

Because... it's stupid. This is not the 80's or 90's anymore, Brazil is not a third world country. "The developing world" refers to the highest growth GPD, but still dirt poor countries that are in Africa (mostly) and a few other places. Now, getting smartphones into their hands, a practical item by all accounts, is a hugely ambitious goal with a race to get there it's true. But these places have cell service, but they don't have televisions, odd it may seem but true. Building roads and schools is considered a major accomplishment. No building roads is a major accomplishment and building schools is a dream to strive for. And Nintendo wants to sell them a game console? The world's changed, if you even want a gaming device then a smartphone is going to have far more free games than any console ever will. And it has cell service, did I mention many of these places have cell service as their only internet connection? Meaning a dedicated console without a built in cellular connection isn't going to work well. And then there's the data rates, now getting Angry Birds isn't going to be so bad. But data rates in these places make the US seem like a haven for good internet. So unless your dedicated console is also going to only play tiny downloadable games (and what's the point of that?) then I don't see it working. As for discs, it's not like there's gamestops downtown to go to. Then there's the competition, by next year an Xbox 360 will be $150, maybe $120 and it will just keep going down from there. That's a console with a proven design, a huge game library, a name for itself, continued support, what's not to like? Then there's the business model, consoles are usually a razors and razor blades model. Sell the console at a loss or at cost, make up for it by taking a percentage. A console cheaper than a 360 isn't going to have $60 games sell in huge numbers. It isn't going to have $10 games sell in huge numbers. So who's going to develop for it? The answer would be what, current mobile developers. Back to having a smartphone compete directly with your game console. So that's the thing I can see. Who's the target audience for this? Someone who: A. already has a smartphone, which can game and access the internet and etc. B. has enough money for a dedicated games console. C. has a television to hook it up too already. D. Can't afford a $120 for a 360. E. Has access to a way to reliably get games (actually solid internet service? a gamestop? reliable service from Alibaba and Amazon?). I'm not sure how many people that meet all those requirements exist, but I'd easily bet its not a lot. I'd hate to say I have a good track record on predicting Nintendo's bad moves, and that no one likes to believe me any other time I tell them Nintendo is being monumentally stupid. But I did call the necessity for a 3DS price drop two months before it happened, and predicted the Wii-U's failure before it even came out http://gamasutra.com/blogs/JohnathonSwift/20120921/178118/The_End_of_Nintendo.php And now they're targeting... a what? A sub $100 console, anything more and its in the same exact price range as a 360. That also can demonstrate value in gaming more than a smartphone, when the only people that would develop for that price range and hardware spec are ports of mobile games that are already available on Android. And then we assume that these "developing world" people don't already have an Android phone to play those games on... what exactly am I missing other than a bunch of "don't discount Nintendo!"? I'd like to know, because if I'd discounted Nintendo back 18 months ago when I predicted the failure of the Wii U, I'd have a lot more money now than anyone that kept their stock. I mean, they're targeting China? It's called a god damned PC, the home of free to play and already with maaaaaaaaasive install base there, and with a massive native games library to boot. I know it's hard to think of Nintendo going away. They've been around forever right? But that doesn't mean they're doing well business wise. Until they get rid of Saturo Iwata and replace him with someone sane, I'm guessing Nintendo will slide into oblivion.

It implies an entire console... I mean if it's just a 2DS kinda thing I get it. But if it's actually what it implies.

It's not so bad in many games, just the occasional time it just eats away at you. It also dampens out any highs you get, getting a kill doesn't feel as rewarding here as it does in say, DOTA 2. That being said it can still be an enjoyable game to just start up and play for a match or two, which only lasting 20 minutes apiece isn't bad. I already knew DOTA 2 could go on too long at times, any hour+ game has a 50/50 chance of just feeling like an absolute slog. And to top it off making games MUCH shorter really doesn't seem to detract from anything.

Science is the impartial observation of nature. That's it. Anyone telling you someone different doesn't know what it is, because the two are literally interchangeable terms. "The impartial observation of nature" is the actual definition of the term in most every dictionary. It doesn't mean we humans are perfect at applying it in reality, but it is the literal and ideal definition.

Not really. I don't mean to insult anyone, I don't mean to bag on anyone's "thing". But science isn't a "philosphy" or a "belief" like most people understand and categorize as such. It simply the act of attempting to determine what happens when. That's it, that's all it's "trying" to do. To say "oh yes, objects attract each other. This happens, ok." No meaning or lack of meaning is ever tied to it, other than determining how objects in the universe appear to work to the best of the observers ability. Now I can understand where his frustration with, err, philosophical thinkers, comes in. Occasionally they'll pop up in a scientific debate, even as I've tried to establish they're really two different things. And they'll try to marry the two somehow, and that just plain annoys scientists. One of my favorite examples was just a forum thread like this one, on the "nature of reality". But since the forum thread read "science" with explicitly science based content, it was a scientific argument of "what have we figured out." Then someone came in and started talking about how mathematics could describe any possible universe, and so what was there to separate all those other theoretical universes from ours? Is our universe just math? And that really gets into philosophy stuff. I proved it as comically as I could, refined by a guy with doctorate in physics, as "Yes the universe exists. I will prove it by chucking this rock at your head, and you will feel pain!" Which was the debate. Yes philosophy and what is meaning, ok. But that should, hopefully, be separated out from "what do we know, to the best of our ability, about predicting physical outcomes in our observed universe?" Or as Terry Pratchett put it "The world's edge exists. You can go out there and see it for yourself. And it will continue to exist whether you believe in it or not. But does that make it the truth?" Thus, I hope, neatly separating philosophy from science so we can all go about our business happily and separately. Bonus SMBC comic:

Exasperated Sigh.

It's not so bad in a balanced game, or when you're winning. But it is awful when you're losing and you feel it's impossible to turn around no matter how well you do personally. Smash Bros is indeed awesome. I loved it just start out and sucking, and I loved it when I could relate to pro matches and would play people that also played the local tourney scene a lot. I get it's the goal, and understand that it could be out there somewhere. But it doesn't feel right in a bad situation, frankly I think they should go for something else.

I haven't looked through everyone, they'd better be! I also REEEEEEEEEEEALLY don't like the team level up mechanic. It might "alleviate" things for the lesser players, but it really, really, really lessens any feeling of personal accomplishment and holds back the better players. If you have uneven teams, like 3 not so good players and 2 good ones, then the good ones can be doing quite well but not really make up for as much as they would in DOTA because their overall XP pool relies on those not so good players. It really makes it a drag to be doing well personally and yet feel the drag of your team not doing as well on YOU hero, because the enemy in your lane is a higher level than you even though you've been soundly kicking their ass all game. It SUCKS, It's hard to describe how much it sucks. Imagine if you were playing... any online shooter and even though you're doing really well personally, you are simply not even allowed to get a "kill streak/bfg 9000/enter thing you get well for doing here" simply because other people you've little control over aren't doing well. Frankly this could just kill the entire for hardcore players that just want to play randomed games on occasion, basically requiring you to play with players of a near equal or greater skill level than yourself unless you want to maddeningly stare at your own success with nothing to show for it. It kind of goes against Blizzard's own lesson from Wow, in that any mechanic should be framed as a reward and not a punishment if possible. This feels like an indirect but still tangible punishment for something you didn't even do.

Good news everyone! Your shits not all retarded anymore!

Watched The Desolation of Smaug again (Blu Ray and all that). And that movie is a damned fun ride all throughout. A little thin on the plot verse action, but the fantastic set pieces, amazing visuals, and solid score keep the entire thing moving all throughout. It's a damned shame part one really needs a lot of editing work, because part two really works well for the most part. A lot better than say, Amazing Spiderman 2 if the people I know and reviews are to be believed. Jackson gets a lot of recognition of his visual style and action scenes. But he's also got a particular talent for putting together a complex set of differing characters and interwoven plotlines and perspectives. Hell I'd say he's so good at it that no on even thinks to comment on it, which is probably about as big a compliment as you can get when it comes to that kind of management. The only time you ever see it otherwise is for people complaining about it not being good enough (Nolan's Inception and etc.) Now if someone could just keep the man out of the damned editing room...

I haven't gotten to Darksouls 2 yet, soooo.... eh?

Calling it, future multi-platinum rockstar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvsN0SoC9lU A few hours ago (from this posting) this video had like 18,000 views. Now it has over a hundred thousand thanks to reddit, wouldn't be surprised at more to come.

*Headsmack The internet really needs a sarcasm font. Since there isn't one I'll just be leaving now