Delicious LiveJournal Links for 11-26-2010

[andrewducker]

• Gender gap in physics exams reduced by simple writing exercises
  (tags: gender academia education)
• PC Gaming 'a Generation Ahead' of Consoles
  (tags: games consoles technology computer_games)
• Menstruating woman subjected to TSA grope because panty-liner obscured her vulva on pornoscanner
  (tags: tsa women security_theatre usa)
• New Body Printable Organic Body Armor is Twice as Strong as Kevlar - I love how the article contradicts the headline
  (tags: military biology technology war)
• 6 Romantic Movie Gestures That Can Get You Prison Time
  (tags: romance movies crime funny law relationship)
• What books are you most thankful for?
  (tags: books writing)
• MENS 10K WHITE GOLD BLUE DIAMOND NINJA TURTLE PENDANT - for the geek that has absolutely everything.
  (tags: jewelry ebay Geeky tmnt wtf)
• Better off people and better educated people both have a harder time recognising others' emotions.
  (tags: class society psychology emotion)
• Is increasing VAT progressive?
  (tags: vat tax uk)
• If Spain or Italy left The Euro, the whole thing would collapse.
  (tags: euro europe currency)
• 2010 on course to be joint hottest year since 1850
  (tags: climate climatechange temperature)
• Peer Pressure - a neat, SF short-short story. Reminds me of an Alan Moore Future Shock.
  (tags: scifi fiction short_story)
• Leaving the euro: how would it work? The answer, of course, is disastroustly for any country that did so.
  (tags: finance currency euro europe ireland)

Comments

[drainboy.livejournal.com]

The Xbox360 and PS3 weren't even cutting edge when they were released. That's a facet of having to not take a huge loss (take a moderate loss instead) with early adopters on selling these systems for the price of a mid-range PC 4-5 years ago.

Thing is though, even if you wanted to do PC only games, you'd have to make them compatible with systems that were at least 3-4 years old if you wanted the majority of the market. Unless you're focusing on just the high-end PC gamer market, which if you're going through the 40m subscribers to steam (a large proportion of which have high end PCs) then you might well have enough of a market to be profitable.

If you factor all of this in at the start of the project and have enough man power to be running concurrent PC/Xbox/PS3 engine teams (there'll be some extra audio programming needed and your GUI design/implementation teams will be fairly large if you're going to do it right for each platform) then it's do-able to grab all three markets. Much like CoD just did...tanked on Wii though :)

[princealbert.livejournal.com]

I'd argue the one benefit of consoles over PCs:
Level playing fields. Every xbox360 has the same hardware (except storage), every PS3 matches every PS3 when it comes to games. [Obviously PS3 hardware has changed drastically as Sony cutout emulation and then OtherOS, but that doesn't effect games]

Crytek boss Cevat Yerli argues: "PC is easily a generation ahead right now. With 360 and PS3, we believe the quality of the games beyond Crysis 2 and other CryEngine developments will be pretty much limited to what their creative expressions is, what the content is. You won't be able to squeeze more juice from these rocks."

But that is pure nonsense. Neither of the two powerful consoles have reached their limits yet, demonstrated by the fact that the xbox360 is now processing the Kinect data and the obvious jumps we get in new games every 6 months.

I'd be interested to hear what the new Crytec engine can do on PCs that it can't do on consoles, and then how many buyers of the final game will have the capability to see such features.

But if you're happy to continually upgrade your PC every game release OR buying the latest engine game and turning off as many features as possible to increase FPS then have fun on your PC.

I put the disc in and play the game, and in multiplayer it looks just the same as the guy on a different continent I just wiped out.

[andrewducker]

Yeah - the biggest thing about consoles is that they're all the same. No faffing with graphics settings, things just work.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Also, a lot more players on consoles. Big games like CoD are selling about ten times as many copies on consoles, at least, as on PC, I thought... and given that multiplayer isn't cross-platform, it can kinda suck to be playing multiplayer games on PC at sometimes and thinking "wow, there's 100 servers.. if I was on a console there'd be 10,000". Of course, I've also seen things suggesting console players move onto new games faster than PC gamers do.

Also, games like CoD sell a huge amount more on consoles, and the PC market is pretty riddled with piracy. Was it CoD4 where they had stats for the amount of people playing pirate copies online at release?

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

There are quite a few people who play [popular recent multiplayer team-based shooter of choice] but with graphics turned down til it practically looks like Doom in order to get the best possible FPS. Not turned down a little to avoid any slight slowdown, but turned down as low as the game allows and then sometimes further with console settings and fan patches.

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

6 Romantic Movie Gestures That Can Get You Prison Time

Good article. The thing that shocked me most in it was learning that the insipid rival in Liar Liar is Westley!!

I also liked this article (http://www.cracked.com/article_18753_the-6-most-creative-abuses-loopholes.html?wa_user1=2&wa_user2=Weird+World&wa_user3=article&wa_user4=recommended) linked from it.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

Our VAT (aka GST) in NZ has just been increased. (From 12.5% to 15%, offset, in theory, by a reduction in income tax). It I'm sure would be classed as regressive though, since there's no zero-ratings here of note. (An irony with this is our PM says he wants NZ to catch up with Australia's economy. Australia has a 10% GST rate.)