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[fenrif]

Gah just realised i butcherd the quotes in my last post, d'oh!

Actually, DVDs didn't. It allowed videos to be placed onto discs a lot easier and be read by specialised technology. So, essentially, you COULD watch videos using discs. It's impossible for CDs to do that (I think), you can only use computer drives to read them and them temporarily store them on your hard drive whilst watching the movie.

CDs were able to be used for things other than games. Music and the like, which they're still used for because they're the best format.

Blu-Ray's been out for... About eight years, now? Five in the Western market? It really doesn't seem like people are that interested in them. Maybe because of the expensiveness of all players, but I don't see it dropping any time soon (maybe five to ten years) and by then we'll have that holographic disc on the rise, as it has already been developed - all they have to do now is manufacture it far cheaper.

What are you basing this "people aren't interested" thing on? Seriously, is it just becuase you personally don't use them? Because people you personally know don't use them? They're the standard format for hi-def media, people are definatly interested in them.

Really, get a printing press or whatever. I'm sure you can't.

Photocopiers allowed your average person to do all this. It doesn't matter if it could be done, it matters if the masses can do it.

The average person COULD make copies of things, as I've said. Beorn pointed out taht companies hired huge pools of typists. Why do you think that was? So they could make copies of things. It's not like pre-photocopiers people just stared a document dumbfounded as to how they might replicate it. Yes it was more time consuming, but it's not impossible to type up the same document twice.

I'm not saying that it never will, but by the time Blu-Ray is in a place to be competitive with DVDs, there will already be technologies overtaking Blu-Ray.

Here. People are buying HD TVs etc because they allow them to watch HD channels and because they LOOK pretty damn nice and wide. People aren't buying Blu-Ray because it's really not that interesting. Total spending on Blu-Ray discs: 151.4m euros. Total spending on DVDs: 1.3bn euros. There's a massive difference, and as the article says, sales have already slowed, even during Q4. (ie. Christmas?)

Disc could get damaged, lost, etc etc. More discs, less data gets lost if you lose a single CD. Nevermind there's no real point in shoving it all onto a single CD when you could have a pretty boxset.

That's pretty much what I'm saying, but I'm fairly certain I'm correct. It's just a transitionary step (and not even a longlived one) up to higher formats which will probably just be as useless.

So you're logic is that any format past DVD is useless? ANY transitionary step between incrimental increases in technology is utterly a waste of time?

That article you linked makes a lot of leaps of logic based on very few facts, but even so comparing the adoption rate of DVDs to blu-rays without considering any other factors is pretty silly. Was the economy in a huge recession when DVDs were being adopted? Was there a huge digital alternative when DVDs were released? Was piracy as easy and as widespread when DVDs where released? etc...

Discs could get damaged, true, but I'd argue that it's easier to take care of one disc than 7. And if you do damage your blu-ray that contains the entire first season of the wire, you can just go re-buy it. What happens if you damage disc 1 of season 1 of the the wire? You go buy the entire season again. Wheres the difference? Having a pretty box is flat-out silly as an answer. I'm sure if you want a massive pretty box someone will sell it too you, even if theres only one disc inside.

You still really haven't convinced me that you aren't just complaining about blu-rays beacuse you personally don't use them. Again, you're entitiled to your opinion, but don't try and argue that something is utterly useless and a dead format just because you don't use it. Note: I don't use blu-rays myself either, but I know plenty of people who do.

[Virex]

Also, the current expectation for the LHC is, IIRC, that it will produce several dozen terrabytes of data each second when it's running on full capacity. Just to put the data needs of research projects in perspective. If anyone would like to back up a sizable chunk of research data from a particle accelerator or a large telescope they typically need several blu-rays if not more (they generaly use external hard disks for that)

[Deadmeat1471]

Rich people will buy extravagant new technologies, because they have little better to do. That extravagant technology after much consumption by the egrerious rich will result in a drop in price of the original technology, and a NEW IMPROVED, HIGH QUALITY version of that original technology is designed.
Now The the average joe is toating the original extravagance and the rich have a new toy to play with for a week or so.
And so the cycle continues, from extravagance to common consumption and round again.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

What the heck is Fijbij?

[Josephus]

Fubu, dude. They make clothes. Although technically speaking, they make "threadz".

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

Apparently I fail at mindless consumerism... Or is knowing what most of the other ones are enough?

What kind of name is Fubu for someone who makes thread?

[Josephus]

No, I mean they make clothes for a certain subset of young urban males, specifically so they can look like

Spoiler: this (click to show/hide)

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

Sup homies!!! Keepin' it G up on the ski slopes!  Yaknow whaum sayin?  West side Indianapolis!

[PsyberianHusky]

I like how we have deduced a pessimistic view on society mostly from E3 2010, instead of just saying E3 is a load of crap used to create hype.
Its this stupid hype that has  become common in the industry thats a problem we conclude things will be good without proper knowledge and in turn are distressed when they are mediocre.
The problem is if ya don't hype you game it could slip under the radar.

Mostly what bugs me about the game industry is how they like to have stories prepackaged with the game as opposed to letting the story create itself. I would have liked mass effect if it didn't give me any direction in the world and just kinnda let the player stumble about the space robot bug thing, I like fallout, but it bugs me how there is only one path to an ending, the biggest change I would like to happen is game mechanics that create unique storys, imagine if a large studio took the Dwarf approach to a big budget game, and things just happened in fallout like super mutants taking over rivet city.
 

[beorn080]

You seriously expect people to back up all their essentials on CDs? I've done that recently. It's a royal pain in the ass. Hell, I've had to split up RAR archives across CDs. I do not want to have to do that again.

And that's not even counting multimedia stuff, which wasn't even on the hard drive I had to back stuff up off of, nor was it a full disk image.


You're also not considering heavier-duty usage like, say, servers. Those need as much storage as they can get, trust me.

What exactly are you backing up that is both essential and that massive? Yes, if you do multimedia work, you'll require more backup space. Just like if you did engineering work, you got a ditto machine and vats of ammonia.

Also, if your using DVDs in your servers in place of hard drives, your probably doing something wrong.

[lumin]

I read this article and it left me scratching my head as to what the heck the author was even talking about because he kept using the terms, "hardcore" and "casual".

I've never understood what these terms even meant as labels for gamers or for games themselves.  Am I considered a hardcore gamer if I'm into playing Wii Fit and Farmville for 12 hours a day?  Am I considered a casual gamer if I'm into games like Masters of Orion 3 and Morrowind, but only play it for 1 hour a month?

What is a casual game?  Is Windows Chess a casual or hardcore game?  And why would Dragon Quest be considered a hardcore game back in 1994, but it and games like it be considered a casual game now?   Is Halo a hardcore game (as the author in the article above claims)?  If so, then would that make Doom 1 and Castle Wolfenstein hardcore games as well right?

How do you define them?  Is it how long the game lasts, how many features it has, or how hard the difficulty is?  Does it depend on when the game was released, or how much advertising it got, or how big the budget was for it?

I think that people need to drop these labels.  I think they can be used if they have some sort of context.  For example, WoW is a pretty casual game in terms of the level of UI polish and easy-to-use control scheme.  People can jump right in and play in seconds, however it can be very hardcore in terms of character builds, min-maxing, and overall growth efficiency.  Course then that begs the question, if the UI is easy to use for beginners, would it be more "hardcore" because more time and effort went into the development of making the game easy to play?

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

My understanding was always that casual games are those designed specifically to appeal to non-gamers.

[lumin]

My understanding was always that casual games are those designed specifically to appeal to non-gamers.

I think that's one definition, but I've seen a hundred others, and most of the time when the term is used nobody knows in what context they are using it.

Puzzle or "parlor" games (as Wikipedia points out) are used a lot as an example for casual games and I think this is pretty silly as well.  I know a few older folks who would probably be considered "non-gamers" because the only game they play is Bejeweled or Solitaire.  However, they spend almost every free moment of their day on these games at work, or in-between chores at home.  They end up playing these games far more than I would on a "quote-unquote hardcore" game.  If "complexity" is the issue, I would beg to differ.  I think Bejeweled and other puzzle games can be far more complex and challenging than the likes of Dragon Age or Halo where I'm basically watching an interactive movie or pointing a crosshair and pushing "A".

So by your definition, I don't think "casual" would be the right word for it (done without serious intent or commitment).  Because there is certainly nothing casual about these kind of games or the way people play them.

[Muz]

Casual = Games that take a long time to learn (no learning curve)
Hardcore = Anything that takes more than a few days to learn to play competently.
Competitive ones are the most hardcore, because you spend days trying to get at the level of skill that others are.


I'd put Guitar Hero up as a hardcore game. And Farmville is clearly casual, even if you spend 20 hours a day on it. Halo is hardcore if you're playing multiplayer. MMORPGs are somewhere in between, unless you actually have to learn about game mechanics instead of pressing the same button all day.

[G-Flex]

You seriously expect people to back up all their essentials on CDs? I've done that recently. It's a royal pain in the ass. Hell, I've had to split up RAR archives across CDs. I do not want to have to do that again.

And that's not even counting multimedia stuff, which wasn't even on the hard drive I had to back stuff up off of, nor was it a full disk image.


You're also not considering heavier-duty usage like, say, servers. Those need as much storage as they can get, trust me.

What exactly are you backing up that is both essential and that massive? Yes, if you do multimedia work, you'll require more backup space. Just like if you did engineering work, you got a ditto machine and vats of ammonia.

Also, if your using DVDs in your servers in place of hard drives, your probably doing something wrong.

Who said anything about using DVDs in place of hard drives? You need high-density storage for a number of reasons, removable storage included. Ever hear of a tape drive?


Also, I've had a lot of things on this computer that would be rather difficult to find again, or that would be irreplaceable, and that would have trouble fitting onto a few CDs total.

There's also the fact that people might want to back up things that aren't completely essential. If I have to reformat my hard drive, maybe I do want to back up multimedia files, or game saves, or any number of any things that aren't completely vital to living, simply because it would be a pain and take some ungodly number of hours retrieving them again, in cases where that's even possible. If I spent a long time getting something, or getting it to work, or creating it, or it's something that might not be feasible to find again, then yes, I'm going to want to back it up, and no, I'm not going to want to do it on two dozen compact disks when an alternative is sitting right in front of me.


And god forbid if I ever had to actually back up my music. Do you know how long it takes to rip, verify, encode and tag a few dozen music CDs? I can't remember either, but I know it's too long for me to want to do it all again.