SiN

Actually, thinking about this a little more: it's likely that the HD-DVD add-on was never very profitable for Microsoft, but the benefit of control made it worth selling. Control is a very valuable form of currency. With Blu-ray, it wouldn't be profitable *and* they didn't have the chance to gain more control either. Lose, lose.

Re: download only games. Yeah, game size is outpacing bandwidth AND hard disk capacities by quite a margin. Manufacturing optical discs is *always* going to be cheaper, so I don't see discs going away soon. And when they do, they'll be superseded by streaming/cloud technology, not full downloads. Re: Blu-ray. The "MS couldn't swallow their pride" argument doesn't make sense when you consider that their decision making revolves around... The only logical explanation is that making a BD add-on was not commercially practical. I imagine that: 1) the licensing fees, 2) the long standing difficulty of selling add-ons at retail, and 3) the declining price of Blu-ray players*, factored into the decision. And of course, building it into the Xbox itself would run against their goal of lowering the price and increasing margins on the Xbox. * not to say they were cheap at the time, but the trend was there. Did Microsoft lose sales? Definitely. It couldn't have been significant though, because if the cost-benefit analysis worked in their favour, they'd have introduced a Blu-ray add-on, pride be damned! So why introduce it in Durango? Microsoft need to build the most powerful, future-proof platform they can. Part of that is high capacity discs. Price and margins are a lower priority.

Oh yeah, I'm aware of the history. What I'm saying is that there's more than one way to approach a problem, and it's possible that there's a better solution for the L3/R3 buttons. Huh, now this I wasn't aware of! Hopefully this means the new consoles will all have decent dpads.

Also: the d-pad, or as I like to call it, the "lets map random shit to these buttons" pad. I think it used to be worse early in the generation (left = night vision!, right = MAP!). These days the mapping makes a little more sense, like left/right to cycle weapons, or the Gears of War style weapon selection mapping. I get that the stick buttons are important, but they're badly designed buttons. Also, they're not discoverable! Ideally, we'd get rid of them entirely, but maybe it's possible to make them work better? (think Xbox dpad vs Nintendo dpad)

Problem with analog buttons is that there isn't enough "give" to make them useful. From my MGS experience, it's really hard to do a half button press consistently. Also, Sno: are you sure the Xbox/360 controllers have pressure-sensitive buttons? I'm almost positive they don't... Anyway, on controller design, my take is not so much adding more buttons, but refining what we've got. I wrote about this a while back, but here are the strongest points: On analog sticks: On button placement: On analog triggers: On those stupid "press the analog stick in" buttons

The Housers are smarter than that.

Uhh, I think this is the best pitch for this game I've heard so far. You kinda sold me on it, actually.

I don't want to get too deep into this, but a thing that's been on my mind... You know that shooting sequence in the game? The one where you do nothing? I keep thinking about how if that sequence actually allowed the player to shoot the targets (thus, robbing us of that great moment) more people would likely consider this a game. Would you agree? If not, how many shooting sequences would it take to make this a game? Facetious question, I know, but the point I'm getting at is this: why does "aiming" equate to choice, whereas navigating the world does not? In most FPSes, the "choice" of which enemy to aim at/shoot first is about as meaningful as the "choice" of how to navigate the world. Why does one get special treatment over the other? As for rules and goals, TFOL is actually not that different from a platformer. (rules = collision & physics, goal = reach the end) I'm not sure why the term Video game can't encompass this "new, different and exciting" stuff.

Yeah, basically .net (or any managed language for that matter) is great for portability, but terrible for performance. XNA is a great (and now unsupported ) API, but performance was a pain with it, even for fairly simple 2D games. For a practical look at the difference: Apple gets away with lower spec'd iPhones which perform faster (and more efficiently) than the competition because iOS apps are native (Objective-C), whereas most Android apps are managed (Java).

Basically, what tegan said. I talked about this in the Wii U thread: Similarly, the Gameboy Colour is a Gameboy with a faster clock speed and more memory. The GBA uses the GB CPU (the Z80) as a sound processor. The PS2 used the PS1 CPU as a sound processor as well*. The DS is actually a dual-core system, it uses the GBA CPU as a co-processor. And so on ... (* tegan, you missed that one) This is only possible with careful planning, and consistency in the architecture. When Microsoft switched from Intel to IBM/PowerPC from the Xbox to 360, hardware back-compat was impossible. Similarly, PS2 to PS3 wasn't possible because of the Cell architecture. If I recall the rumours correctly, everyone is going AMD + ATi next gen, which is yet another break in architecture. Also, the days of a single chip powering a console are done. It's crazy if you think about it: the thing that powered THE ENTIRE PLAYSTATION is used as a sound processor 5 years later! Tech moves fast. But doing that these days ("hey guys, lets use a three-core CPU and a videocard as co-processors!") is kinda impossible. Nerdy rambling over.

Yep, quite likely. I finished it in two sittings, and I tend to not play for more than 2hrs at a time. So I'm guessing four hours, give or take.

Late (as I tend to be) but my GOTY 2012 write-up: http://mobeenfikree....1/09/goty-2012/ Abridged version: Game of the Year Fez Runners Up XCOM Dishonoured Spelunky The Walking Dead Hotline Miami Mobile Waking Mars Super Hexagon Short, But Sweet Little Inferno Journey Sound Shapes Death Ray Manta A thing that I noticed after publishing: I love how many challenging but accessible games there are on the list. Fez, all the runners up, and Super Hexagon are really hard games, but not in the "this UI stinks" or "these controls don't work" or even the "I have no idea what I'm doing" sense. Difficult, but fair, games. I like this trend.

Don't get me wrong: I don't like having a million consoles under my TV either. Personally, I think back-compat would be nice (but not a deal breaker). And more than that, I think the idea of preserving history (i.e.: these games) is very important, especially as emulation is going to get harder with each passing generation. But you have to look at it from a cold, hard, business perspective: "We've spent $X million on back compat, do we data to prove that its inclusion sold $X million worth of consoles?" If the numbers add up (and hey, they might!) then we'll have back compat. What I'm saying is that I doubt they will.

The next generation really needs to think about the competition of smartphones and iPads. And Steam. And a possible Apple TV. While consoles and PC are still where I go for gaming, it's becoming harder to ignore just how clunky even the basics of launching a game are.* Steam does well, but even then, the "DirectX is installing", etc boot up time is infuriating. (* excuse the self-linkage, but I wrote about this a while back: http://mobeenfikree....ration-console/ ) I'm kinda disappointed in how Microsoft kinda screwed over their gamer audience. I love the 360, I have *way* too many games for it, but I can't help but look at what the dashboard (and their priorities) have become and feel a bit cynical. I wonder if this approach will backfire for them in the coming generation? Early on, it's the gamer audience that shifts units (nobody else is going to pay $300+ right?). If enough people feel the way I do (and honestly, I kinda doubt that) Microsoft may be left in a tough spot. Anyway, I'm guessing I'll be doing it the other way around this time: PS4 first, and wait-and-see with the next Xbox. Oh and a Wii U at some point before all of that. I doubt this is going to happen. Judging from this generation, it's *way* too expensive to pull off even a mediocre implementation. And it satisfies a tiny fraction of the gaming population. Honestly, I'd rather hang on to the old consoles and get the real deal, not some "almost" (if that) emulation.

I use DaisyDisk on Mac, it's fast, works really well, but really: because it looks pretty.

Oh, if we're talking peripherals: I've found having a mouse *and* trackpad is super-handy. When my MacBook Air is "docked" I have a full-size wired Apple Keyboard flanked with an old Microsoft Intellisense mouse* to the right, and a Magic Trackpad to the left. I find myself using the mouse for pointing operations, and the trackpad for scrolling (and the occasional gesture). Also handy when sipping on tea (with the right hand) to continue scrolling (with the left hand). * I bought this mouse in 2004 on a whim when I got a laptop and realized I'd need a USB mouse to play Doom 3. Honestly the best mouse I've ever owned. It has exactly THREE buttons: left, middle/scroll wheel and right. THAT'S IT.

This seems too obvious, but: Disable Windows Aero? It might be a paging / pageswap issue. It would definitely explain the random nature of the slowdown. Does the slow down occur more frequently after the computer has been running a while? I'm not sure what the specs are (your link pointed to support, but I can't find the specs) so: - How much free space on the HDD? What's the RPM? - How much RAM? My guess is that there's either not enough space for a page file, the page file allocated isn't large enough, or (a long shot) the HDD is too slow to page effectively.

Yeah, it's very likely not the videocard. Since it shares system RAM, you can find out pretty easily! Just check the system memory usage in Task Manager. If it's looking bad, the better (and cheaper) solution is to buy more RAM. Are there any common scenarios where the computer performs slowly? "slow at times" is hard to diagnose. Is it during HDD intensive scenarios, or when using apps with heavy memory usage, or is it just seemingly random? Finally, long shot, but just to be thorough: define "pretty much running a clean install". If you're using the Dell Windows image it may have stuff hidden away. It's always best to use a proper Windows CD/image.

@Thrik: doing HD remakes is a lot easier from a technical perspective. The game doesn't need to be emulated, it can just be recompiled for the new platform. I'd say that's more likely to happen than the Wii U's BC getting HD support. @Sno: Agreed, from what I've heard it sounds pretty terrible. Anything before the game is booted up can be improved. But once that game starts, there's not much that can be changed.

If the past is any indication, the reason is because Nintendo doesn't do software emulation for back-compat, it's supported at the hardware level. So when your Wii U switches to "Wii mode", the console actually underclocks the CPU and GPU, switches off RAM modules, etc to match the exact specs of the Wii. As a result, almost every game works perfectly. The downside, as you've pointed out, is that you can't actually enhance or change how it works. This is how they've always done things. With Wii-to-Gamecube BC, you couldn't access the Wii's storage, and you couldn't use the Wii remote or bring up the Home menu. Also worth noting: Emphasis on "look". I'm willing to bet that while the Dolphin emulator looks great, and works pretty well, it's not up to Nintendo's shipping standard. Emulation is tough business.

Ha, I have the same reaction with the Uncharted series. Drake goes "Shit, not these guys again!" and I'm like "yup".

Genuinely frightening moment. Loved it! Skyler's performance in Season 5 was strong. In particular: And the flip side of "beautiful and effective": every dealing/doing/cooking meth + salsa (?) music montage was the best. Also, I found the camera-attached-to-props shots to be hit-or-miss. There are a few occasions where it worked, but it mostly felt kinda gimmicky.

Same here. What I love though, is how the Goombas hop in sync with the "wah wah".

So about this thing: I think the "every cubelet is an x" train of thought is wrong. Because not only are there too many cubelets, but the number is also undefined as of now (remember that 22cans can pull the "end game" switch at whatever layer they want). My theory? It's not that each cubelet represents a thing, it's the order which the cubelets are destroyed that will determine something else. Maybe the (weighted) order of the cubelet tapped will shape of the terrain/world in their next (, next) game. (OR I may be late-night rambling and this'll make no sense tomorrow.)