prophetik music   Judges ⚖️

oh, i'm not arguing that i think a lower price point is better - of course it is! you've gotta take a few things into consideration, though. there wasn't a "new console" crown in the 2006 holiday season, since everything was new. MS and sony didn't have a knock-it-out-of-the-park exclusive to start things off, either, while nintendo had that zelda game that came out. would you buy a new console without knowing what awesome game you're planning on playing on it? i wouldn't, and i haven't - i've always made sure there was that one game or feature i "needed" (halo series for 360, blu-ray awesomeness for ps3, etc). while the 360 and ps3 didn't sell monstrously well right off the bat, they both sold enough consoles that they were successful. obviously the wii's sold more than the other two combined, probably. now is that because of the lower price point, or the motion controls, or the fact that it's nintendo and OMG IT PRINTS MONEY? who knows. likely all of that mattered. would an extra 50$ on the price have made the 360 suddenly more viable? probably not, since the other stuff was what made the wii so sexy to the average consumer. so, yeah, nintendo's 'known' for lower prices on their consoles, with controllers and peripherals roughly the same price as new stuff from the other big companies. but, with the situation so different this year, i think that a higher price point is definitely possible. the 3ds sold poorly because of cost - definitely! it's a handheld, and the iphone is way cheaper but for a console, people are fine spending looots of money for a set-top box (look at the proliferation of set-top internet tv boxes like googletv and boxee), and with nintendo being the only new thing this season i definitely think that they'll take advantage of the recent rise in consumer spending and make people pay lots for their stuff. in terms of comparison, look at the N64 and PS1 launch. the PS1 released a year before the N64 at the 400$ price point. it had a very successful launch, as much because the huge stock of good games as anything. next year rolls around, they had dropped to 300$, and the N64 came out also at 300$. now, of the two, the PS1 was superior hardware, and the N64 suffered from a higher cost to build - even though it was a year later! - mainly because of how much more expensive the cartridges were than discs. either way, the PS1 wound up selling over a hundred million units over the course of the console's lifetime (as of 2005, they were out of production in 2006). so was the higher price point detrimental? not really. are people more careful of their money? definitely. are there a lot of people who are conditioned to a 500$ PS3 and a 500$ 360 bundle, and see a HD launch system at 400$ as not a big deal? absolutely. you'd be horrified how many people used to come into gamecrazy while i worked there and plop down 600$ in cash for a new system, some controllers, and a game or two, particularly when they clearly couldn't afford it. you'd also be horrified by how many people came in and bought every single terrible sonic title just because it's sonic and they have to play every sonic game. that's just the market for games. the new thing always sells like crazy, and if they get it out with a minimum of major bugs (aka RROD), then they're just printing money.

360 arcade, yeah. the middle model with the 60gb drive was 350$, and the elite was a hundred more at that point. considering that the 360 shipped for 400$ new for a loong time, yeah, they'll go for it =)

sorry i didn't read 50 pages of nattering back and forth, bleck. the 400$ price point has been fantastic for the 360 and PS3 for years and years, and they only recently had to start adding value to get people to continue to buy it (controllers with custom colors, etc) with the MW2 bundle. before the big 360 price drop, the elite was still 350$ with one controller and no games four years after launch, and the PS3 was still 400$ for one controller, no games, and no OtherOS. if it comes out at 400$ with a Wii Sports-style everyman game and drops to 350$ when everyone else comes out with a next-gen system, i wouldn't be surprised at all. it's the new thing, it's nintendo, and people line up for days for whatever they do.

at neblix's first magfest, i say we all punch neblix for real in memory of this awesome internet moment.

definitely agree here. the uncanny valley point is also a definite thing to state here as well - an almost-realistic animation of a face bothers a graphics designer a lot more than it bothers your standard consumer.

i find it interesting that nintendo stocks have tanked two days in a row as a direct result of the wii-u's inability to impress investors and the fact that they basically didn't demo any really important new games - like the job announcement for smash brothers, for example i think the wii-u looks really interesting, but i want to see what games they make before i think about buying it.

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even more loooooool...have you ever even used shreddage, or just listened to a bunch of terrible examples of it? shreddage isn't meant to be awesome at everything, just rhythm guitar. for 99% of what non-guitarists do, it's awesome. although i'm sure you've got a deeper knowledge of it since you've used it and all. and it doesn't "fail much worse" than something else - it doesn't fail at all, really, if you're using it reasonably. but what do i know, i'm [insert something semi-relevant here]. ok, i think we're done berating that point looking forward to hearing a new version, cj.

it damn well better be, it took six years for them to release it. as for arguments that nintendo stuff is super-resilient and sony/MS stuff sucks because of the PS360, let's compare. gamecube: is a quarter of the size has a minidisk drive, removing possibility of bumps scratching the disc uses a 20th of the power draw biggest issues with the 360 is the extra power the 16.5v consoles drew caused overheating issues, it gets bumped and scratches discs because morons stand it upright, and it's big enough that it gets banged around more than a smaller console. once they upgraded the internals to 65nm and then 45nm technology, no more red rings! while i worked at gamecrazy, we took in loads of 360s, but only one falcon (14.2v) and no jaspers (12.1v)...out of probably fifty consoles. wayyy more Wiis and PS3s of all models and numbers. the only falcon we took it overheated because they guy had a sweater sitting on it "accidentally" for a few days. of course if you sit it on the carpet/cover it with stuff it's going to asplode. same with a hot laptop. how is nintendo going to "fix" these issues? that's just technology growing up. of course your highly advanced and specialized laptop breaks when dropped but your original gameboy, built to get beat on by 3-year-olds, doesn't. you wouldn't toss your computer around and bang on it while it's running, so why would you do that with a console. people fanboy over consoles all the time, but it comes down to the fact that the PS3 is right around the tech baseline for crapping out in-warranty (~6%), the wii's higher than that (7.5%), and the jasper 360s (only ones made since 2008) are waaaaay below that (~3%). gamecube sits around 7%. people are idiots.

i saw that there was no multitouch, but resistive = baaad for finger usage. just doesn't respond like the capacitive screens do. is it that big of a difference in cost?

i'm quoting this so it's on the next page. because it's and looks like a schwaltz post with all the links. edit: damn, counted wrong.

wait, you're saying that midi's better than real samples of a guitar for doing rhythm stuff? looooooooooool! nice try, man, but not true at all. even if shreddage didn't have like five times the articulations that midi does, it's still more playable than midi simply because there's KV switches in there to MAKE it more playable.

looks like a lot of cross-platform games, where i'd just play it on something i've already got. any list of exclusives out yet? i see smash brothers, but what else?

is there a listing anywhere of what games are coming out for this? i've never owned a nintendo console while games were still being made for it, but the technology represented here is pretty interesting.

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it's bad because it's bad, man. i'm the first one to say that something can be completely unrealistic and still balls-out awesome, but if you're going to chug on midi-quality guitars, it better fucking rock or it's just going to sound terrible. compare it to a game. if the graphics are really, really bad, most people will have trouble seeing past that and accepting gameplay or design that's not completely awesome. minecraft is a good example of 'poor' graphics becoming cool because of the great gameplay and great design work. when the judges say "samples", they mean your instruments, synths...anything that's making a musical sound, be it percussive or melodic. so yeah, those turrrrrrible trombone and flute synths count. my issue with the drums is twofold. they're mega-robotic, meaning that every hat hit is the same, every snare hit is the same, etc. as a result they sound more repetitive than they actually are, because your ear gets tired of the sound quickly. my other issue is the tone that you're getting from them. they'd sound great in other genres, but the very dry and poppy sound that you're getting from them doesn't fit the grungy YEAAAAAH RAWK sound you're trying to go for, and it just adds to the disconnect. i wouldn't say that it needs loads of effects, honestly. first, take that 'guitar' and burn it combining a decent set of guitar samples - shreddage is mega cheap and awesome! - with some good distortion will get the basic geetar sound you're looking for, and then it's just a matter of humanizing it. beyond that, remember that 80s stuff had loads of room sound and reverb on it to make it sound extra epic and awesome, so maybe listen to a few 80s tracks and try to simulate that same sound with your drums. then just keep rolling through each instrument in the track, and instead of just scrolling through presets and finding one that's close, try to actually mold the sound more, whether it's through playing with the envelopes, using filters or other effects, whatever you can do with your synth.

wow, that intro is so cheesy. all the voiceovers are really 80's bad, man bad samples would be anything that doesn't sound realistic and/or good. so, like, those terrible fake guitars would fall into that category. those brass and flute samples in the middle are bad AND robotic, with no effort given to humanization, so that's likely a big part of the issue. the bass is a decent sound by itself, but it's mega robotic and doesn't have any character either. your drum sounds don't really match the style, either - they're super dry and don't have any room sound to them, and they're super clean, so there's no body to the tone - and really unimaginative programming certainly don't help.

you could probably change my name from 'bradley burr' to prophetik, since that's my artist name.

i've no doubt that they'll add in some terrible tutorial as well to learn people what minecraft is, since most of the mass of humanity that play console games aren't known for their propensity to learn something new without hand-holding.

your cat has huge mitten-looking paws, just like one of mine =)

hey bs - heh, your initials are bs - that was funny when someone cool did it once, but it's been a bit played out at this point. not to mention that it's not really close at all. amen to that - i've got a metroid track to do, as well as some demo stuff for a possible 'employer'. i just couldn't bring myself to work on it last week when i was already doing other stuff.

there was definitely too much kinect. did you see how inaccurate the Future Soldier shooting demo was? a bloody train wreck. shooters are getting more and more twitch every day. i can't imaging playing a game without a controller at this point, not with the trash they've been handing us lately. kinect's got some great uses, honestly, but none of them are in competitive gaming, let along shooters or other bread-and-butter genres of games for consoles.

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loooooool, nice work man. at least you've obviously played any of the games with voiceovers. halo 4-6, halo: ce remake, more gears 3 footage, minecraft, and the new dashboard look all are pretty exciting to me. with halo and gears pretty much the only reason i own two 360s instead of one, that's big stuff. the kinect stuff - particularly the ME3 and fable stuff - was disappointing at best. the ME3 integration is clearly tacked on, whereas fable just looks terrible (instead of press A to win, now it's waggle to win). fable's a big part of my 360 experience, so seeing where they're going with it isn't cool. the integration with Future Soldier looks awesome, but the shooting element of it isn't very interesting to me as compared to the nice menu integration for the weapon customizations. i like that they're not making many games that require it - it seems that fable is the only primary IP that's getting the treatment, and more because of peter molyneaux than anything else. the search function - and the voice mapping for TV stuff - is exciting to me. if they bring local programming to the 360, i'm sold for life since there's only satellite where i am. i'm sick of having to prowl atdhe and channelsurfing to find the football game or whatever, and i'm not paying 300$+ for the terrible streaming service the NFL has. a CBS-based stream would be great too, since their web player sucks terribly. of all that, though, the halo games are the biggest deal for me. i know it's a year off, but halo's the reason that i got into console gaming, and it's most of why i still have a live membership. you can say it's not a big deal, but for me it's awesome to know that they're expanding the canon and not rehashing more old battles like with ODST and reach. edit: WHOA! cloud saving to xbl? count me in! one of my biggest frustrations has been the inability to access game saves from box to box now that no one uses the memory sticks anymore. even cooler.

do we have to 'vote' in the unchallenged categories as well?