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SapporoGuy, on 17 May 2013 - 08:43 PM, said:

In fairness, EA do a lot more than they could do. As well as the roster update (and updating player values and stuff, which presumably takes a lot of research) they also add features every year to the franchise. Part of this is because they've got a pretty prominent competitor I guess.

The fact is though, if people pay for it, why wouldn't you? The difference between lots of iterations of products is evolutionary or negligible (take iPhones, or most popular movie franchises). Its not surprising the games industry follows the same track.

I'm all for it if it funds innovation.

SapporoGuy, on 17 May 2013 - 08:43 PM, said:

Xbox (for example) is still a billion dollar business. I'd hardly say the days of making money from consoles has gone.

The reason that people move to new consoles is because the speed (and other benefits) are usually pretty big. In the same way, I'd guess that PC gamers usually upgrade their machines every 7 years (if not more frequently).

There's also the fact that newer games won't be released on older consoles. You don't have to update as soon as the next one comes out, as long as you accept the fact that you're on a burning platform and that you'll get less and less games/support over time.

SapporoGuy, on 17 May 2013 - 08:43 PM, said:

I'm not really sure what your point is here. The games industry is by far the most successful (financially) of the entertainment industries.
Whilst game industry titles become less valuable over time, the same can be said for movies. Once they've got past the cinema release, and the initial DVD release, they're constrained to the bargain box in supermarkets (except in very rare cases). I'd say the trend is pretty much identical in games (or any other form of entertainment).

SapporoGuy, on 17 May 2013 - 08:43 PM, said:

The PS1 used a 33MHz RISC chip. The PS3 uses a 3.2GHz and has multiple cores. Thats a pretty major spec difference...

The reason that all major console manufacturers used PowerPC (the wii is PPC and 1 core of the PS3 is) is because of cost - the Xbox (and probably others) needed a custom chip to give the required performance at the required price point. Intel's off the shelf products at the time wouldn't offer the performance needed in critical areas for cheap enough. PowerPC allows the manufacturers to build custom chips which specialise in what they need.
For the next generation that won't be the case - I wouldn't be surprised to see some the x86 architecture.

SapporoGuy, on 17 May 2013 - 08:43 PM, said:

I think this means consoles in TVs?

TVs and Games Consoles are separate things. Decoupling them means that I can buy a high definition 50" screen if I want, or I can buy a old school CRT screen, but still play the same games. It also means I can play my old consoles from years ago, rather than having to lug out an old TV.

The current industry trend is 'smart TVs' which are basically TVs with apps. I reckon we'll see that carry on for a bit.

SapporoGuy, on 17 May 2013 - 08:43 PM, said:

I don't really think that gaming needs a 'revolution' as such. Its already had one in the last couple of years in regards to casual gaming (the wii and the kinect) and mobile gaming. Consoles are still profitable as hell, and will be for a long time. There's simply no sense in playing the latest halo game on your iPhone, and there'll always be a market for that sort of thing.

What's also interesting will be Stream Boxes, Ouya, Onlive and the like. They have real potential to disrupt the major players.

SapporoGuy, on 17 May 2013 - 08:43 PM, said:

Money mostly. Consoles are still a very closed ecosystem and it benefits pretty much everybody to keep it that way.

Again, things like Ouya and Streambox might see that change though.

SapporoGuy, on 17 May 2013 - 01:04 PM, said:

The reason that this won't happen is because its fundamentally against the economies of the games industry. Games cost an absolute ton to make, both in terms of development and marketing. They tend to be really technically complex, and subject to very strict deadlines (its difficult to push back a game when millions of pounds of marketing have gone into it).
Additionally, consumers don't want the 'big bang' of paying tons for a console up front but increasingly complex technology makes the manufacturing costs of consoles quite high.

For those reasons, Sony and Microsoft both sell their consoles at a loss, making money from other things (Xbox Live subscriptions and games).

If you make incremental updates to games free, essentially you lose the major revenue source for games. Consoles will either become prohibitively expensive, or companies will artificially limit technical development to keep the costs of production down. A lack of profit for publishers will mean that they only fund games they know will be successful (arguably this is true now - I'd predict it'd be more widespread) - without the tons of money that companies make off your FIFA's and your Call of Duty's, they'd be even more risk averse. These changes would exacerbate the already widely reported issues in games development - smaller wages and longer hours to go with the tighter profit margins.


In some ways though, console games are going in that direction. It seems like both Sony and Microsoft are stepping further towards digital distribution with every release or update (I for one hope we start seeing Steam like deals on consoles more frequently), DLC and patches are regular fare in games nowadays, and with an increase in streaming models and app stores, I wouldn't be surprised to see at least one of those innovations being present by the end of the next generation of consoles (PS4 and Durango).

It really doesn't seem like that much of a big deal. The real thing with 'walled gardens' is stopping people from getting apps anywhere except for officially vetted, proprietary stores. As everybody has recognized, this isn't something that Google is doing.

It seems like they're specifically closing a loophole which only Facebook (and as far as I'm aware very few other people) are using. Having one way to do common things (updating, installing, uninstalling, managing privacy, etc) is a really powerful usability feature, and I'm not surprised that Google is taking steps to protect that.

To be honest, my preference would be that Google clamped down on things even more. It'd be good to have a really high quality official app store, with appropriate vetting etc for non-expert users, whilst still allowing more 'expert' power users to choose their app store if they want to. Sort of like the Apple situation, only with Google making 'jailbraking' as easy as possible (a checkbox like it is already) and generally encouraging it.

Its the general point about proprietary vs open source solutions I suppose.

Unfortunately, Open Source Software still has a lot of distrust in a lot of commercial situations. Companies don't want to accept the risk.

Because there's not really one place to point the blame, if something goes wrong it can be more difficult to manage. For example, if somebody happened to submit GPL code into a popular open source blogging site, the company using it could (or may think they could) be in a difficult legal/IP position.
There also tends to be a lack of support and customer service with Open Source Software over commercial software.

If you buy a CMS from a well established company, then you have a place to point the blame if anything goes wrong, you have somebody to pick up the phone to and call if something goes wrong.

Some of this is obviously not correct for some open source solutions in certain situations, but in other cases it is. That unfortunately means that OSS generally gets painted with the same brush. As the old saying goes "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM".

If you've already got a CMS with Adobe and you're happy with their service, you probably don't care too much about using Business Catalyst.

SapporoGuy, on 23 April 2013 - 07:16 PM, said:

No. Javascript was created by the Netscape team.

Microsoft invented AJAX though.