"Picture, instead of Clippy, we could have Microsoft Creeper."

Sneaks onto your screen when you least want it to and then gets in the way and blows everything up? Yeah, that'd make an apt replacement for Clippy certainly.

"They need to drop Java or figure out a way to compile Java to actual machine code so the game runs well."

Yeah, why has no one thought of this?

You realise the way modern Java (since like 1999) works is that you write an application in Java, that Java code gets compiled to Java bytecode, which you can think of as a cross platform version of assembly, and then that Java Virtual Machine on which you run that bytecode (i.e. the compiled Java application) does in fact convert it into actual machine code right? Not just machine code, but machine code optimised for the exact machine the JVM is executing on? This allows the JVM to reach C++ levels of performance and some cases go beyond, because C++ is generally only compiled for a specific architecture, whilst the JVM optimises for a specific machine.

This does mean slow first time execution of modules as each module is optimised to that executing machine's native machine code the first time it is used, but after that first execution of the program or library you're basically getting native performance.

For what it's worth though, the console version of Minecraft (360, PS3, PS4, Xbox One) is apparently written in C++ because some of those platforms - i.e. the Xbox - don't have a Java Virtual Machine on which the Java version could be executed on.

I have a relatively low end laptop, it cost like £300 a year ago, and it runs Minecraft absolutely fine. What spec are your machines if they can't even run Minecraft?

I doubt Microsoft cares how it does in Japan nowadays, Japan stopped being a relevant indicator of the health of a video game industry entrant about 10 years ago. Since then both the US and subsequently Europe became bigger markets by far, and even markets like Brasil and China are arguably more worth spending your time on now than Japan if you're in that industry. Japan's two decades of economic stagnation have really hit it's relevance to the industry hard in this respect - the struggling Wii U and Sony's precarious overall financials (The PS4 is doing well though thankfully) have only exacerbated the problem.

Despite their mis-steps this generation they actually did well last generation in the end in large part because they were pulling in over $1bn of pure profit from Xbox Live subscriptions alone within a few years of the launch of the 360. This couple with the highest attach rate by a decent margin coupled with higher profits-per-game than the Wii last generation allowed them to be more profitable despite not shifting anywhere near as many consoles as the Wii did.

Whether they'll keep doing well is anyone's guess, but the XBox division is currently a massively different beast compared to how it started last generation with it's RROD writeoffs and massive initial R&D expenses on the system.

There were rumours of them selling it off and such but I can't see them getting rid of it now that it's finally been a healthy net profit centre for a good few years now - it would seem odd to invest 10 years on profitably making your way into a key target area for Microsoft - the living room - only to then give up when you've achieved your goals of decent market penetration and real actual profit, still, stranger things have happened so I guess we'll see.

I've no idea because personally I'm not American and hence not affected by the IRS' actions so nor do I particularly give a shit what they have or haven't lied about.

The IRS may be a bigger threat to liberty in the US than the NSA, but it's certainly a non-entity in terms of dangers to liberty for the whole of the rest of the world compared to the NSA which is a real genuine threat for those of us not living in America yet still having our data stolen and our privacy invaded.

It's not so much the success of the franchises year on year I was referring to but ultimately the size of the demographic in question.

Ultimately these sorts of games and most PC games (educational games aside) are decide to fulfil a simple purpose - to entertain, to provide people with an avenue to relax and have fun.

So my point is, ultimately, that if franchises like CoD, BF, Halo and so forth are routinely shifting 5 - 10 million units year on year whilst PC games only ever achieve these sorts of figures with one title every 3 years then my argument is that clearly these franchises are successful in their goal - that a majority of the populace looking for such entertainment find it happily in these games.

My point therefore, is that if a majority are happy with these titles as an option for their enjoyment that one cannot realistically objectively define these titles as "rubbish" but only subjectively do so as a minority viewpoint. Fundamentally, as a large majority of gamers prefer the console medium for even their shooters it seems a bit of a stretch to say objectively that they are rubbish else if they were then people would instead just game on PCs (much like they used to in the Quake/Doom days when PCs were vastly more popular for shooters).

It was only with the advent of things like Halo on the Xbox and Goldeneye 64 on the N64 that console shooters really started to take off and I'd argue that there was a turning point there at which gamers started turning towards consoles for more than just mario-esque platformers and top down shooters and the like and started gradually to prefer these platforms for shooters in general.

I don't think there is a mutually exclusive PC or console gamer demographic, most console players I play with are also PC gamers and I myself am, but I find more and more that the games I play on my PC are games like RTS games and harder to categorise and very innovative (e.g. Minecraft) indie games more and more and shooters less and less - this despite cutting my teeth on PC shooters, and, as I say, still having the fondest memories from Quake above all else with Doom and Wolf coming in after that.

But this is a sworn declaration, and if it's a sworn declaration then it must be true because it's not like anyone has been caught lying under oath on this topic is it!

Honestly, sworn declarations on this topic and the lack of punishment for breaching their oath when swearing the truth means you might as well read "Sworn declaration" as "In a conversation with his mate Dave down the pub".

Um, I don't know if you read a different article than the one you linked but it doesn't back up your rant. You're claiming they didn't innovate and tried just adjusting the controller by 1mm. They stuck to the design because the 360 design was popular and widely praised as one of the best console controllers of all time. Why would they want to stray too far from that? even the Wii U's pro controllers and the PS4 controller has converged towards the 360's design.

As for innovation the article points out they tried smells, projectors and all sorts, how is that not innovating? If their R&D tells them people like the existing controller with only minor adjustments then that's valid R&D, why go with something completely alien just for the sake of being able to argue "Hey look guys we innovated! it's shitter than the previous design and everyone hates it, but we innovated!".

Innovation in R&D isn't about changing shit wildly for the sake of it, there has to be a product that people love at the end of it else it's pointless.

I suppose it depends what your goal is, that might be great in a country like the US where most people are living relatively comfortably (even the poorest in society aren't really suffering outright starvation and disease) but where military expenditure is high that you have a point.

But in India you have hundreds of millions living in abject poverty where starvation, lack of shelter, lack of availability of education, and widespread lack of treatment for disease are real issues.

Thus, it seems odd to suggest we should blow money to try and save some people in the future from a theoretical eventuality that may or may not happen in the next hundred, thousand, tens of thousands maybe even hundred thousand years when there are people we can spend that money on helping survive in the hear and now. Just because a statistically likely event that works on astronomic timescales is overdue doesn't mean it's going to happen tomorrow, the nature of such timescales is that it may not happen for enough generations that we can solve poverty now and still have time to head to the stars too.

Let those nations that can afford more space investment do so, whilst those that can't actually make an effort to stop suffering on their home soil before they start getting ideas about reaching for the stars.

That's because in the 1940s everyone else had basically blown each others countries to smithereens. India is competing in a stable non-war torn world. In the 1940s the US was one of the few countries whose homeland was largely unscathed by the war.

It's easy to do well when you're the least badly crippled country going than it is to when you're one of the most crippled on the world stage.

Yep, I'm skeptical of anyone who claims console shooters are rubbish. There's a reason games like CoD, Halo, Battlefield, Gears of War and so on and so forth make by far the vast majority of their sales on consoles - people enjoy them, meaning they're not rubbish.

Which isn't to say that I absolutely agree that if I was looking for ultra-competitive multiplayer (I still have fond memories of Quake 1 DM and TF that make everything since pale in comparison whether PC or console) then I'd look to the PC with a mouse and keyboard combo, but that's something different, that doesn't detract from the fact that consoles are full of great shooters (okay, I don't personally think CoD is great or at least has been since about CoD 4, but a lot of people obviously do) and even then there are some, like mass effect, that IMO were actually better on consoles (I played both versions of ME2) which feeds into your comment about more story oriented shooters. Personally I think Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 highlighted the situation well - the PC and Console versions were both shooters, but were also very different games taking advantage of the types of setup that make shooters work well on the respective platforms- the PC version was an out and out FPS, the 360 version was a 3rd person shooter.

Destiny isn't crap because it's a shooter on a console, there are plenty of great console shooters that prove that a fallacy. Destiny is crap because it's crap. People expected it to be great because "Bungie!" but the fact is that everyone that made Bungie great, either left, or stuck with 343 at Microsoft and all that was left were those living off the original glory of Halo (many of whom had fuck all to do with Halo and Halo 2's development). Those who did hang around and were actually talented like O'Donnell got pushed out by folks over stupid stuff such as being lovestruck by the grand has-been McCartney because OMG WE'RE WORKING WITH A BEATLE, SCREW YOU AND EVERYTHING YOU'VE DONE WELL AT BUNGIE OVER THE LAST DECADE O'DONNELL!

It was never going to live up to the hype, for it to do so you needed a dream team - you needed the Halo 1 / 2 era Bungie, or the Wolfenstein/Doom/Quake era id Software, or the CoD: Modern Warfare Infinity Ward- you needed that type of team. They just didn't have it, and they tried to do way more than a team of their competence can possibly get right.

People expected the current Bungie to be their father's Bungie, and it's simply not and that's why it has disappointed.

Yep, this is time and time again what's made me give up on MOOCs and I say this as someone who has done formal education online (I did an additional degree in my spare time with the UK's OU some years back).

Videos are mostly shit for learning, if I don't get something I want to be able to just re-read the paragraph, not dick around with some video player trying to get it to the right point again so I can listen to some monotonous or accented person drone on - it's not that I have a problem with accents, it's that it's an additional distraction when you're trying to take something in and learn - I want to focus on what I'm learning, not have my mind stray off about how the guy in the video just used some amusing (to me) American pronunciation of a word or something.

It strikes me as sloppy, people are doing videos so much now because it's easier to slap your webcam on and ramble on, turn it off and upload it, but learning materials need to be better than that, they need, like a book, to be edited, to be split into proper paragraphs, to be indexed.

If they are, then I can read a few paragraphs on the train, but I can't really be bothered to prat around pre-downloading videos, or trying to stream them over and unreliable 3G connection as the train goes through tunnels. I don't have time for any of that- I just want to be able to load a quick bit of text and read it at my own pace, re-reading it if need be.

This modern lazy trend towards videos is killing information, I've worked places that block video streaming in the past and if your API explanation is a video then that leaves me documentationless, of course I can probably go and get that unblocked sure, but I could also just go to one of their competitors that isn't so lazy and boneheaded. Not everyone has the capacity or even wants everything as a video which isn't to say as you point out that they have no place, sure they do, sometimes videos do work - but not for lectures, rarely for conveying large bodies of technical information.

This is why I've completed an entire degree with distance learning but have simply never finished an EdX course or similar despite many of the courses being particularly interesting. The idea of these MOOCs is absolutely great, it's fantastic. The implementation to date? shockingly bad.

"In Cuba, on the other hand, the Castro brothers managed to hang on to power despite the economic crisis caused by the disappearance of theirr USSR sugar-daddy."

That's not a problem with my reasoning, that's exactly my point. They could do this because the US had opted to still keep them completely isolated rather than open the flood gates of US money and culture onto them - something they hadn't done to Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and any others I've missed. That wouldn't solidify the Castro's grip on power - it'd do exactly what it did in all the other ex-USSR states, it'd result in the overthrow of such people.

Let me guess, you're one of those people who thinks culture stops at films, music, food, and dance right?

So what's your point? That if you've got one hostile nation a few miles off your border that it doesn't hurt to have another?

That's not a rational proposition, the fewer hostile nations you have neighbouring you the better, just because you can't make one of them not hostile doesn't mean you should not take efforts to make those you can potentially make not hostile actually be not hostile.

I think you're conflating leadership with the citizens. Unfortunately not all countries are in a position whereby the leaderships actions are reflective of the will of the citizens.