I think the heads will look fine. It will be in their interactions or not where they will freak people out. The actors faces are captured while they sit in a chair and act into thin air. Then the captured performances are then stuck on bodies motion captured separately and the scene is choreographed. I expect there will be many occasions where actor's eye line is not correct (e.g. not looking at the evidence or the other person), or the acting will be all over the place because they're acting into thin air, or they'll be pulling faces which are out of sync with their body motions, or they'll not be holding the phone / gun properly - a hundred and one other weird things that will freak people out.
We'll wait and see though. I reckon there is still potential but there is also potential for it to go disastrously wrong.
We'll wait and see though. I reckon there is still potential but there is also potential for it to go disastrously wrong.
You don't put your info on PSN either unless you're buying something. Even then it's only necessary when you're buying through a credit card. If you don't intend to buy anything use a fake id. Even if you have a fake id you could still buy stuff through a Visa debit card or points.
I have 3 accounts on PSN, one for EU, US and Japan. Only the EU one is my real name. The other 2 are fake ids. The US one is even associated with an Entropay account which doesn't care what values are stuck in since it's a Visa debit card.
I am not privy to PSN's data but I would not be surprised if a good 70% of PSN accounts were utterly worthless even for phishing purposes. Of the remainder, then attacks are also fairly limited if the credit card is encrypted and lacking the CVV2 number. I expect every single one of those numbers is one some watchlist now and a flag would go up if fraud starts occurring beyond the usual background noise.
I have 3 accounts on PSN, one for EU, US and Japan. Only the EU one is my real name. The other 2 are fake ids. The US one is even associated with an Entropay account which doesn't care what values are stuck in since it's a Visa debit card.
I am not privy to PSN's data but I would not be surprised if a good 70% of PSN accounts were utterly worthless even for phishing purposes. Of the remainder, then attacks are also fairly limited if the credit card is encrypted and lacking the CVV2 number. I expect every single one of those numbers is one some watchlist now and a flag would go up if fraud starts occurring beyond the usual background noise.
Maybe they chose to hack Sony because they found a vuln and exploited it. Next week it will be someone else's turn.
I'm not surprised people are not going wild over the 3D. I've played with a few units and the eyestrain was virtually instant. I had to dial the 3D right down which makes me wonder why they even let the effect be so intense. It's like toaster timers that go up to 10 when most people wouldn't ever use it beyond a 2 or 3. Even when it's dialed down it doesn't seem to add much to games. When you look beyond the 3D, the rest of the system is decidedly lackluster.
I think you need to do some research. Go look at the PICA200 chipset's performance. It's got roughly the same poly draw count as a PSP and while pixel fill rate is approx double the PSP, so are the number of pixels the DS has to fill. Perhaps the PICA200 is moderately better for shaders and some other things but it really is old tech.
The 3DS is mutton dressed as lamb and I wouldn't be surprised if the Wii 2 is when that turns up. Nintendo simply aren't on the cutting edge of technology and prefer to sell devices using a gimmick hoping most owners are too ignorant of the tech to notice how lacklustre it is.
The 3DS is mutton dressed as lamb and I wouldn't be surprised if the Wii 2 is when that turns up. Nintendo simply aren't on the cutting edge of technology and prefer to sell devices using a gimmick hoping most owners are too ignorant of the tech to notice how lacklustre it is.
Yes you described PCs and the price of a PC vs a console and the effort required to support a PC vs a console should tell you why they don't do this. If consoles start coming in different core configurations it becomes a QA headache to test and support all those consoles. Devs would probably support the lowest common denominator so it would be a waste of time even offering such functionality.
The 3DS has a seemingly amazing gimmick but in practice it seems not to have caught either reviewer's or the public's imagination. The 3D has widely been reported as causing eyestrain, the games don't make any significant use of it and once you dial the 3D down or turn it off, what does that leave? A console which is barely more powerful than a five year old PSP but at 2x the price.
I reckon the 3DS is still like to sell well, just not as well as Nintendo hoped and won't do so until some big titles turn up and the thing gets a price cut.
That's not to say Sony will get an easy ride either when the NGP turns up. I can't see how they can make it a cheap device. At least you'll be paying a fair price for the tech that goes into it, but that price could still be too much.
I reckon the 3DS is still like to sell well, just not as well as Nintendo hoped and won't do so until some big titles turn up and the thing gets a price cut.
That's not to say Sony will get an easy ride either when the NGP turns up. I can't see how they can make it a cheap device. At least you'll be paying a fair price for the tech that goes into it, but that price could still be too much.
They don't want homebrew and they don't want Other OS. This is just a bunch of jerks leaping on a bandwagon. If you want an open system, don't buy a games console ffs and don't be surprised if the manufacturer drops on you like a bag of hammers if you start releasing cracks that facilitate piracy.
Exactly. Anonymous is just a bunch of ADD kids who DDOS for the lulz. Sony should simply make efforts to harden their external facing sites, hone their security response but otherwise ignore these jerks.
Anonymous is on our side? Bullshit. They're a bunch of ADD kiddies who want to disrupt Sony's services for the lulz. Do they seriously think a lame DDOS attack on a few servers will make Sony relent and allow crackers to facilitate piracy on a multi billion dollar platform with no repercussions? Of course it won't.
EQ was a milestone for being the first 3D MMO. However customers were treated like a predictable cashcow, and not with the service one would expect of a subscription game. When the Shadows of Luclin turned up, the game became extremely buggy for months. You'd log in and there would be glitches galore and the whole game server would crash out. Cycles of patches and crashes went on days, weeks, months. I was paying to be a beta tester for an expansion I didn't even own!
The disconnect snapped me out of the delusion that I was enjoying the game. Truth be told, like most MMOs, the game starts off fun but then the fun turns into grind. In EQ's case the grind was sadistic - if you died your exp sank and would take an age to recover. Crafting was random. Manually /auc'ing to sell crap was time consuming. Travel was arduous. Corpse dragging was travel with the prospect of dying and losing more exp. The whole thing was a time sink.
Aside from that, the world was a hodge podge of various fantasy tropes and gratuitous bandaid expansions, the client was arcane even by standards of the day (e.g. no alt+tab while playing), the game was constantly nerfed, twinkers were rampant, camping spawns was boring, trains frequent and the economy was shot to hell.
I tried EQ2 briefly when it became free to play but it just reminded me of all the reasons I got fed up of the first game. I much prefer Lord of the Rings Online which is also free to play. It's got a good story, authentic lore, is a very pretty to look at, the grind is pretty light (e.g. you can fast travel easily) and the client is stable and friendly. It's not perfect though but still much better than my experience of EQ.
The disconnect snapped me out of the delusion that I was enjoying the game. Truth be told, like most MMOs, the game starts off fun but then the fun turns into grind. In EQ's case the grind was sadistic - if you died your exp sank and would take an age to recover. Crafting was random. Manually /auc'ing to sell crap was time consuming. Travel was arduous. Corpse dragging was travel with the prospect of dying and losing more exp. The whole thing was a time sink.
Aside from that, the world was a hodge podge of various fantasy tropes and gratuitous bandaid expansions, the client was arcane even by standards of the day (e.g. no alt+tab while playing), the game was constantly nerfed, twinkers were rampant, camping spawns was boring, trains frequent and the economy was shot to hell.
I tried EQ2 briefly when it became free to play but it just reminded me of all the reasons I got fed up of the first game. I much prefer Lord of the Rings Online which is also free to play. It's got a good story, authentic lore, is a very pretty to look at, the grind is pretty light (e.g. you can fast travel easily) and the client is stable and friendly. It's not perfect though but still much better than my experience of EQ.
Exactly. I've seen people ranting that the DRM is "flawed" etc. That may be so, but that is missing the point. This "flawed" DRM is so sophisticated that it stopped piracy dead in its tracks for 4 years. Compare and contrast to piracy on the DS, Wii, PSP, Xbox etc. It may well be that Sony have figured a way to repair it too but that remains to be seen.
Even if the new firmware was cracked it doesn't mean piracy will reach epidemic proportions. Sony has technological and legal measures they can use to suppress it. We already know the legal measures so here are some technical means -
1. Blu Ray discs can hold up to 66GB (Sony has developed a special format which holds > 50GB). It doesn't take much to imagine them releasing tools that obfuscate and pad out games to fill every last byte on the disc. Who is going to download a 66GB file? Ah you might say, the cracker could strip out the padding and shave it down to perhaps 10GB. Yes. Maybe, Eventually. After extreme effort. In the meantime, the retail copy & sales are unaffected by piracy.
2. Then there is PSN. During signon PSN could ask the box a question that a modded firmware would fail but a legit one would not, e.g. checksum this range of memory, or that file sector. etc. Fail the test and your box & account gets flagged. Fail it enough times and byebye PSN. No PSN means no patches, no trophies, no messages, no multiplayer, no DLC.
3. Then there are games themselves. Sony or other devs could develop obfuscated inline checks and copy protection. Files could be checksummed, binaries could be checksummed. Discs might contain fuzzy bits or bad blocks that an ISO ripper could not duplicate. Checks could be stealthy too, causing the game to fail in weird ways that are disconnected from the test. Google "spyro copy protection" for ideas of the crap a game could do to mess with a cracker's head.
So if Sony have fixed the firmware then bravo. If they haven't well, there's always plan B. Between the two I expect piracy to be pretty minimal.
Even if the new firmware was cracked it doesn't mean piracy will reach epidemic proportions. Sony has technological and legal measures they can use to suppress it. We already know the legal measures so here are some technical means -
1. Blu Ray discs can hold up to 66GB (Sony has developed a special format which holds > 50GB). It doesn't take much to imagine them releasing tools that obfuscate and pad out games to fill every last byte on the disc. Who is going to download a 66GB file? Ah you might say, the cracker could strip out the padding and shave it down to perhaps 10GB. Yes. Maybe, Eventually. After extreme effort. In the meantime, the retail copy & sales are unaffected by piracy.
2. Then there is PSN. During signon PSN could ask the box a question that a modded firmware would fail but a legit one would not, e.g. checksum this range of memory, or that file sector. etc. Fail the test and your box & account gets flagged. Fail it enough times and byebye PSN. No PSN means no patches, no trophies, no messages, no multiplayer, no DLC.
3. Then there are games themselves. Sony or other devs could develop obfuscated inline checks and copy protection. Files could be checksummed, binaries could be checksummed. Discs might contain fuzzy bits or bad blocks that an ISO ripper could not duplicate. Checks could be stealthy too, causing the game to fail in weird ways that are disconnected from the test. Google "spyro copy protection" for ideas of the crap a game could do to mess with a cracker's head.
So if Sony have fixed the firmware then bravo. If they haven't well, there's always plan B. Between the two I expect piracy to be pretty minimal.
Why does the PSPGo still cost more than a PSP 3000? The former is gimped and only plays the limited & expensive selection of games on PSN. The latter can play PSN games and also any UMD title too.
How do you know Blizzard had no such plans? And whether they do or not, these brazen knockoffs don't necessarily mean you're going to get the same quality of experience.
Quite derivative? Gameloft specialize in producing brazen knockoffs of popular titles. God of War, GTA, COD: MW, Everybody's Golf, Soul Calibur etc. I don't see any reason to reward that kind of development. I'm surprised Sony sees fit to let them them on the PS3 given that their games are often the target of this dubious attention.
Piracy DOES ruin sales. Only a fool would say otherwise. Perhaps most pirates wouldn't buy games under any circumstances but some would if the value of buying the game outweighed the effort of acquiring a copy.
Sadly for the DS piracy is a convenient and reliable option. No mods are required on the hardware, R4 cartridges (and many other kinds) are cheap, game downloads are small and lots of games fit on a memory card
Sadly for the DS piracy is a convenient and reliable option. No mods are required on the hardware, R4 cartridges (and many other kinds) are cheap, game downloads are small and lots of games fit on a memory card
Piracy is virtually the default for the DS. I guess at this point backwards compatibility with pirate cartridges should be seen as a feature of the 3DS. After all do they want to be able to sell 3DS devices to such people or not?
I expect it will get delayed but why pull it altogether? If it offends public morals people won't buy it. If people sensibly recognize a coincidence when one happens, it will do okay.
The NGP will only succeed if Sony keep the price reasonable. Give the amount of hardware on display I wonder if that's realistic to expect.
3DS players will can be identified by their crossed eyes and pounding migraines.
