New Testingstan

It's a nice feature and I'm bummed to see it gone, but yeah, not a big deal or totally unexpected with recent trends.

evilsoup wrote:Aren't consoles a loss-leader?

As far as I know, Nintendo consistently sells their consoles at a profit but no one else has since the early '90s or even earlier.

ah OK
well Nintendo have been doing much better than the competition in a lot of ways recently

At one point in time Nintendo was, IIRC, the most profitable corporation in the world, or close to at the very least least.

Today though, if I'm not mistaken that award goes to Apple.

apple has more money than the US gov't

evilsoup wrote:ah OK
well Nintendo have been doing much better than the competition in a lot of ways recently

No they haven't? They've been posting consistent losses for months because the WiiU has so far been a disaster.

Losonti Tokash wrote:

evilsoup wrote:ah OK
well Nintendo have been doing much better than the competition in a lot of ways recently

No they haven't? They've been posting consistent losses for months because the WiiU has so far been a disaster.

He's trolling again.

no, I just don't keep up with video game news
last time I checked was when the Wii was dominating the other two

Man the Wii brand is pretty amazing. My girlfriend wants a Wii. When I pointed out that I have a kinect which is actually does all the things she perceives that a Wii does, but better, she looked at me blankly and then insisted she still wanted a Wii. Brand > content, obviously.

The backwards compatibility thing is an issue for me because my 360 just died.

Otherwise I wouldn't be too fussed.

I'm sorry your 360 died. I'm on my 4th since it launched, which I find funny because every other console I've ever owned still works fine. Including my 1st gen PSOne.

My Dreamcast doesn't play sounds anymore.

Dreamcast!

Man I just realized that I haven't plugged my old N64 in in two years. Usually I break it out once or twice a year to play through Rogue Squadron, (I still can't beat that damn Sullust level without the infinite lives cheat) Starfox 64, and Goldeneye. I'm seriously worried that the next time I try to use it it's going to be dead and i'll be shit out of luck. I don't need a PSone to play those games, since I can do it on my PS2 or PS3, but if any of my Nintendo systems shit out i'll never be able to play those games again.


EDIT: And the Wii virtual console won't work because I just checked the list of games and virtually none of my favorites are on there.

I still have a bunch of working old consoles (some set up even) but don't actually use them much anymore cuz there's pretty good emulators for these and emulators are so much more convenient.

I have NES, SNES, Genesis, SegaCD, PS1, and N64 emulators on my computer and while there's sometimes glitches on PS1 and N64 games, they are still plenty playable.

Acquiring the ROMs for the non-cd ones (for cd games you can just play with the disc in the computer or rip them yourself - I like ripping cuz computer cd drives are fucking loud and inconsistent for a playstation game) isn't hard, I've been able to find every game I own easily on the net.

I use a playstation controller plugged into the computer's USB with an adaptor. PS3 controllers can be used if you get some drivers off the net then plug them right in. The PS controller works beautifully for all the games imo.

I've already picked up my old SNES library Rom-wise, and I'm looking into getting emulators for my PS1 games since years of use and carting them back and forth between mom's and dad's houses has left some of them pretty scratched up. The N64 i'm going to give another shot when i've got some time, but i'll probably move those over to an emulator too.

What emulators do you recommend for those systems? You said they are playable on the ones you use, no frame rate issues and the like?

for playstation I use this: http://www.epsxe.com/

For NES I use a few. on windows for just gaming I like this simple one: http://sourceforge.net/projects/nester-emu/

for cheat codes, this one has more options: http://www.fceux.com/web/home.html but I find it harder to use generally

and I use this one too sometimes: http://xe-emulator.com/index.php?m=download though I've never used the windows version. the xe emulator also works for snes, genesis, and scd, and I kinda like it since it does so much in one, but setup was kinda a pain in the ass since the controller mapping is just a bunch of numbers on a screen, but once it is done it is pretty decent.


For SNES, xe again and also this one: http://zsnes.com/ which works on a lot of games and has some nice options

For genesis I use (again) xe, and also one called generator which has cheat code support

N64 I use this: http://mupen64.emulation64.com/ but IIRC the reason I went with it wasn't because it was the best, but because it was the only one I could find that even worked at all on Linux. but the bugs aren't show stoppers, after getting it installed and the settings right, I beat Perfect Dark on it.



I've never had frame rate issues on these since I got a relatively modern computer in 2005, so that should be fine too. I even used Nester on my Pentium 1 for a while!

I used to hang out at the ZSNES dev forum... like ten years ago. Cool people, learned a lot from lurking there.

TechDirt wrote:The patent application, filed under the heading “Content Distribution Regulation by Viewing User,” proposes to use cameras and sensors like those in the Xbox 360 Kinect controller to monitor, count and in some cases identify the people in a room watching television, movies and other content. The filing refers to the technology as a “consumer detector.”

In one scenario, the system would then charge for the television show or movie based on the number of viewers in the room. Or, if the number of viewers exceeds the limits laid out by a particular content license, the system would halt playback unless additional viewing rights were purchased.

Wow, if they ever implement that it is the most bullshit thing I have ever heard. Not even so much for "Microsoft will spy on you!" even though that'd be pretty bad. But seriously, now they're going to enforce how many people are watching at home? I knew the NFL cracked down on Super Bowl parties thrown by churches and shit, but this?

Fucking hell what is with the entertainment companies and their bullshit? I'm pretty anti digital piracy but holy fuck if they're actually going to start pulling shit like this how can I really complain about freeloaders and PirateBay?

That's literal 1984 shit

Yeah. Granted this story was from November of 2012, so not exactly a "breaking" story. But considering the Kinect has gone from optional feature to a mandatory bundle, and with MS pushing for the Xbox One to be the All In media center, I do have to wonder if this won't be on somebody's agenda, considering how hot and heavy entertainment companies seem to be about digital "rights" and how these days they don't want you to "own" anything but only granting out "licenses to use" and other assorted bullshit.

Face the Kinect toward the tv.

*shrug* Depends on how clever they get with it. I could see them doing something like "if nobody is visible then pause" as a convenience feature, for instance (actually I read one article, unrelated to this, that stated turning your head could trigger a pause) but then go from there as a check to make sure you're not doing something to get around the head count feature.

I mean, I'm hoping and at least reasonably confident that they won't ever do this, or that if they do Joe Consumer will pleasantly surprise me and there'll be enough of an outcry that they back down (as alluded to in that article), but it wouldn't surprise me at all if somebody tried it.

Because of the Vast Pirate Conspiracy and all that which media companies apparently live in fear of.

they're right to live in fear, since piracy is a massive threat to their business model - it has already destroyed a lot of the big record labels. This kind of draconian idiocy isn't the right reaction, of course.

evilsoup wrote:they're right to live in fear, since piracy is a massive threat to their business model - it has already destroyed a lot of the big record labels.

It has? TBH I always thought that was a bunch of overblown fear mongering, but then I don't give a fuck about the music industry outside of movie/TV/game soundtracks (though the fact I can barely even find sections for those might be a clue ) so I'll admit my ignorance on the subject.

evilsoup wrote:This kind of draconian idiocy isn't the right reaction, of course.

Agreed. I think all those torrent freeloaders can go fuck themselves, and frankly the whole "I'm pirating as protest!" is the dumbest thing ever because all you're doing is "justify" them (in their own minds, anyway).

But that still doesn't mean the companies pulling out bullshit DRM schemes that fuck over legitimate consumers is something I support, either. Quite the opposite.

Shit I'd even be for making the whole abandon ware thing more legitimate.