I'm sorry but you are wrong, games like Donkey Kong WERE cutting edge graphics back in the day,one of the selling points of the NES back in the day was how well it could bring the arcade experience into the home.

I think with the Wii U they just bet the farm on the casual market but as we've seen the casual market is "here today, gone this afternoon" and I think the casual market has moved to tablets and phones. That said if both the PS4 and Xbox S (One is a stupid name) are always online DRM crapfests I can see Nintendo picking up a shitload of pissed off former sony and MSFT customers, kinda like how Yahoo ended up getting all the pissed off Hotmail and Messenger customers from MSFT.

That is why I think in the future we are gonna be seeing more games like Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon, where you make the triple A game and then use the engine to make smaller episodic games that you can sell cheaper.

But you can't blame THQ on the gaming market as they would still be here if they hadn't sunk over 100 million dollars into a drawing tablet for consoles. No shit, I'm not kidding, they spent over 100 million dollars cranking out Wacom style drawing tablets for consoles which I wouldn't be surprised if they end up on woot! for a couple of cents on the dollar.

Last I heard EA was up for sale thanks to the previous CEO wanting their own Call Of Duty so bad that he wasted huge bags of money on games that would never be able to even break even, such as how Dead Space 3 would have had to sell over 5 million copies at launch price just to break even.

That is why I think the future will be more bite size gaming and indies, when a game only costs $10-$20 million to make its a hell of a lot easier to turn a profit as opposed to some 100 million dollar money sink. I have argued for years the $60 price point just isn't sustainable in a dead economy and the number of games that don't even break even bares this out IMHO, a game has to have a pretty hardcore fan base to have them shell out $60 and when you add in the cost of all the DLC most of the new triple A titles would cost more like $100+ just to own the complete game and that shit just ain't gonna cut it.

While that might be true when it comes to beancounters look up the Angry Joe video I linked to, the new Xbox is gonna be DOA thanks to it adding DRM so draconian that people didn't believe what they were being told, nobody thought a company could be THAT stupid but...yep! Always online or no games and all games tied to an account so no more trading, selling, or renting...its dead Jim, before it even comes out.

The simple fact is there is a REASON why Forbes named Ballmer worst CEO and its because Google and Apple couldn't ask for a better competitor as he is so fucking retarded and greedy he kills anything good they come up with, Zune, Kin, Windows 8 (which it appears we are gonna get to see our first double flop from MSFT, as Win 8.1 takes everything people hate about Win 8 and makes it even worse) and now the Xbox.

Sadly you could have chimps throw poo at the financial section and invest on what the poo sticks to and get a better ROI than what MSFT has done in the past 5 years, for every success they had enough failures that they never even break even.

Dude you are missing the point, the point I was making was NOT whether shared memory for APUs is a good idea, I'd argue that is a non brainer, its whether a chip designed for netbooks is gonna make for a good gaming rig and I'm saying its not, the IPC is too low and putting all the memory on the die itself isn't gonna change that.

Let me put it THIS way...would you want to buy a "gaming rig" that was powered by an Intel Atom quad with hyperthreading? because that is EXACTLY what you have here, a chip designed to compete NOT with even the low end Pentiums and Celerons but with the ATOM both on price and power usage which I'm telling you all the memory tricks in the world isn't gonna change the fact that your CPU is primitive. Look at what chips they compare the last gen E1800 to or even read TFA where they say the new chip is pretty mediocre on everything but power use.

Hell by that argument the 733MHz Celeron in the first Xbox would beat an i3 if only you put the memory on die and we know that isn't the case, why? Because the Celeron is a MUCH more primitive design compared to the i3, and the same goes for comparing a Bobcat to even the lowest Athlon duals, there is just no comparison when it comes to IPC, none at all.

To use a /. car analogy you can put the biggest wheels on it in the world its not gonna make that Pinto any better and hauling heavy loads uphill.

The Bobcat, which just for full disclosure I have a Bobcat dual in my netbook and I think in that context they are great, I also use them to replace P4s in offices and for a basic office box it also works well, is simply NOT CAPABLE of doing what you want it to do, not without just pimpslapping the shit out of the cores. Look up the benches on notebook check and see how the fastest bobcat stacks up, its a design that gets its ass handed to it by the absolute weakest Celeron chips and gets curbstomped by a 5 year old Athlon, hell give me the slowest Athlon dual core that they make and it'll run rings around the Bobcat as its not made to compete with anything BUT the Intel Atom.

So I'm sorry but you are falling for "magical thinking" in that "Since this product has (buzzword) it'll kick serious ass!" when in reality there is no getting over the fact that this chip just isn't built for that. I mean are you HONESTLY gonna argue that having a pool of standard DDR memory is gonna be FASTER than having a dedicated pile of GDDR 5 for the GPU and an equally large DDR 3 pile for the CPU, really? You DO know that no matter how they spin it you are STILL having to have ALL the graphical memory and computer memory on a single bus, yes? And that you can go to plenty of sites where they even paired the Bobcat with a dedicated GPU just to take the tired old "Oh it shares memory" argument out of the equation and it STILL loses badly to a Celeron or Athlon, yes?

To steal a line from Mel Brooks "Bullshit, bullshit aaaannnddd bullshit" because no matter how you spin it you can't change the fact that at its core its still the weak as hell bobcat chip that frankly has more in common with the P3 than it does with a modern arch. I'm sorry but you could put all the fucking memory on the die itself, its not gonna change the fact that you are using a design where they gave not a single fuck about anything OTHER than battery life and price, seeing as how this chip was built to compete with Atom in netbooks and tablets.

Shared memory is NOT gonna change the fact you have a CPU with such a low instructions per clock that it gets beat by a 5 year old Athlon because all the memory in the world isn't gonna give it shit when it comes to IPC, that all arch and jaguar was made to be cheap and give a decent battery life THAT IS ALL.

Actually if Valve pulls off their Steambox you'll have the best of both worlds, machines designed to be ready to go out of the box but with multiple vendors competing to lower costs and give you choice. That said its been reported that the PS4 and Xbox Stupid (Sorry I'm not calling it Xbox One, Xbox one was a Celeron 733MHz big green and black box that was easy to hack and make into a media tank, this thing is a corporate DRM wet dream) are both gonna be north of $400 at launch which means frankly you could build or buy a decent PC that can game for roughly the same price only again thanks to competition you can buy the games from multiple vendors which keeps the prices down.

I do wanna know WTF is going on at MSFT though, because frankly if I didn't know any better I'd swear somebody was trying to torpedo the company from within. I mean you take a console, which the whole reason people buy a console over a PC is because all you really need is the console and a TV, hassle free and simple to use, and you then tie a fucking boat anchor of phone home DRM that makes the system into a useless hunk of plastic if it can't call home every 24 hours (Fuck even Steam gives you 30 days between connections with offline mode) but that isn't enough so just to make absolutely sure the system goes down about as well as finding a flaming bag of shit on your doorstep you put a bullshit mechanism that locks every game after a single install behind a paywall? So the only other advantage, the ability to rent games, trade games, and buy used, is completely destroyed in a move so nasty that an antitrust investigation really needs to happen? I'm sorry but if I was told the facts without anything else I'd swear a mole was sabotaging the company.

So I'm just glad I switched my boys over to Steam and PC gaming, because between this and Sony with their "Oh we have the same paywall thing but its up to the publishers whether or not they want to use it" which means spoiler alert! EA and Activision and probably Ubisoft will ALL use this bullshit it has made one thing perfectly clear which Angry Joe in that video points out....there is no longer ANY advantages to owning a console over a PC, and a hell of a lot more downsides. Now you will be forced to install everything to the hard drive (which with the Xbox S is a lousy 500GB like that won't run out damned quickly) and it will ALL be tied to a single account thanks to the DRM...huh...doesn't that sound familiar? Kinda like...ohhh I don't know...Steam only without the MUCH lower prices that make it worth using? Basically they've turned the new consoles into nothing but a PC but expect you to pay console prices for games but with none of the upsides to having a console!

So as for TFA from what I understand the Wii U is the only one that is actually still a console in that you can rent games, trade games, buy and sell used games, the other two are just overpriced PCs. If the Wii U can hit the right price point I can see those fed up with the wallet raping the other two are planning buying the Wii U if they aren't ready to switch back to the PC. Personally I think we are gonna see a new PC golden age as a gaming device, I really do. Never before has it been so simple to hook a PC into a TV thanks to HDMI being everywhere, you can get a much better variety of design in controllers that will work with the PC, and thanks to Valve and the Steambox you'll be able to walk into any Worst Buy or Wally World (as well as any mom & pop shop like mine) and just look for the Steam sticker and know it'll game right OOTB. And most importantly thanks to competition you'll have plenty of choices when it comes to where you buy your game, hell if you never wanted to spend a dime you have an endless amount of FTP games to choose from. Being on a PC has never been better and these companies are shooting themselves in the head by focusing on how they can wring every penny instead of making a compelling product, PCs are gonna be THE way to game IMHO.

I thought the UK got their stuff from the Americans? Is Canada really taking third hand stuff when America is right next door? Our economy may be shit but one thing we can do is build a sub, hell its pretty much the only weapons tech we can still build worth a fuck, not like we can build a plane that does more than suck money.

BTW would it be possible to get a tag warning if something is from Fox news or HuffPo? I try to avoid propaganda and those two sites are nothing BUT propaganda and frankly they are the absolute WORST kind of propaganda in that they promote that mindless ballclub mentality where they'll excuse anything that a slimy politician does as long as they have the correct letter after their name. I don't think you can do anything worse to this country than to promote mindless ballclub mentality and a "Oh you can't question that because he is on OUR side" bullshit, because it promotes hypocrisy and blind loyalty, the same ones that railed against the excess of the Bush white house will turn a blind eye and smile to shit like Fast & Furious which was nothing but a false flag against the American people, its fucking disgusting mindless flag waving is what it is.

So how about a little heads up before you link to a propaganda site huh? Both sites are as heavily tilted as Soviet era Pravda and if either told me it was raining I'd want a second opinion, when I see an article on either one I just start wondering on how this helps their cause or hurts the other flag wavers, because that is pretty much all they care about.

Used games do increase demand for the system though. GP doesn't really factor into this, because he only buys used games, but a lot of kids will buy a heap of used games, and get occasional new games for Christmas and Birthdays. 3-4 new games a year works out to 15-20 over the lifetime of the system, which is significant. And after a couple of years there will be decent profit in the system itself. If there are enough people in this position it's an important market.

I have a better idea, how about NO. I mean the speedometers already have both do we REALLY want to spend all that money to throw away millions of signs (and even more in storage, i can tell you nearly every place has huge numbers of these signs for replacement purposes that could frankly last 30 years without printing any more) just so some guys who prefer metric can get their smug on? Are YOU willing to take a 40% hike in local and state taxes to pay for it? I bet the answer to that is no.

And can we stop with these God damned petitions anyway? I mean how damned stupid does the American public have to be to keep buying this lame ass PR stunt? has the administration EVER, even once, changed their position because the people petitioned? I mean for the love of God we even had a "please stop ignoring us" petition (which has to be ironic as hell, having a petition to say stop ignoring our petitions) and every time a petition has said something the bought off administration didn't like (such as the one stating we'd like to stop seeing kids thrown in jail and their lives ruined over pot busts) all we get is a smug little "We hear you but really don't care because you are a peasant and don't "understand" the issue". Yes we DO understand asshole, we understand that you are kissing the ring of various lobbys and would happily sell out the people for 30 pieces of silver just like the last guy whom you said was so bad...but then kept all his policies because wadda ya know? the lobbyist check cleared.

So can we PLEASE stop with the fucking petitions and talk about the stupid ass petitions, pretty please? you might as well be standing in your little free speech zone with your little home made sign for all the good its gonna do, its nothing but a stupid PR stunt to fool the morons into thinking somebody there gives a rat's ass what you think when they don't.

While that might be great for GP-GPU I really don't see how useful that is gonna be for gaming. As for the Xbox One I think Angry Joe nailed it when he said that MSFT has lost their way, hell he said they spent more at their little "unveiling event" talking about fucking TV shows and cell phone style apps running on the thing than they actually did about the games. Considering it looks like ALL used games WILL be locked behind a paywall AND the thing won't even work at all if it can't "phone home" every 24 hours? Yeah all Sony is gonna have to do is say "We don't have that" and they won the next console war.

The problem with AMD is NOT the memory, its NOT the GPUs, and this is coming from somebody that has built AMD exclusively in my shop for 5 years so I want to see the company do better but its the CPUs that are the problem. I mean it should be PAINFULLY obvious to everyone by now that the "half core" design was a major misstep but instead of accepting that and going back to the drawing board like Intel did when stuck with netburst AMD seems to be going full fail ahead and the numbers show that this approach? it just doesn't work well for the kinds of loads a typical consumer has, it works even less well for gamers which is why I've been having onto my Phenom II Hexacore for so long, because Bulldozer and Piledriver just suck.

But even more puzzling to me is why both MSFT and Sony picked the absolute WEAKEST CHIP that AMD sells for their flagships...what the fuck? For those that don't know AMD Jaguar is the next release of the line that started with Bobcat...a chip designed to compete with ATOM on price and power. Its a MUCH simpler design and is really built about being "good enough" while giving you decent battery life and you are gonna use THAT in a next gen console that is supposed to bring all the next gen physics and particle effects that need serious number crunching power... a netbook chip?

I have a feeling it won't take developers even 2 years to max out these consoles NOT because its running AMD but because they really picked the wrong chip for the job. It would be like bragging about your new gaming rig powered by the latest Intel Atom CPU...I don't care how you slice up the memory its still gonna be seriously bottlenecked thanks to the CPU.

You haven't? Dude if you like a good horror check it out, its damned good. Great cast, good special effects and a really great story IMHO.

And the reason I said video is that I have seen videos explaining things like dimensions that made it just SOOOO much easier to follow, like to show how multiple dimensions would be like to us used to only 3 they made a 2D creature in a 2D world and showed how even the concept of a third dimension would be so alien to it that it would have serious difficulty grasping the thought. If they could do something similar to show us how the quantum world works frankly i think it would be more illuminating than a book full of text after all a picture is worth a thousand words ya know.

You can also say its common sense, an often used phrase where I live is "He doesn't have the common sense God gave a goose" and if there is one thing I've learned? Its that you can have a guy with a dozen degrees that kicks ass at going to class and taking tests but IRL is lucky if they can tie their shoes while you'll often find someone who was self taught just because they truly love the subject and learning all they can and they'll actually KNOW the subject as opposed to just passing the tests. Frankly I'd MUCH rather have the latter than the former, if the latter doesn't understand something they can usually pick it up while the former is useless in that situation.

Wow...racist much? I've known book smart and street smart of EVERY race, and what most of us call "street smarts" is being able to interact with the world with common sense and an eye to the possibility of being scammed, you can call it common sense or cynicism if those words make you happy.

But just because some douchebag in Hollywood uses a common phrase as "shorthand" to pitch an Eddie Murphy movie doesn't give them ownership of the phrase and where I grew up there wasn't hardly any black folks but you had street smart and book smart, sometimes in the same person, more often times not.

Hell I know a guy with half a dozen degrees that gets ripped off more often than not and while I'm sure an IQ test would show that he is a genius that doesn't give him even a drop of street smarts and in this world you really do need both.

You are being funny but I've known guys with a couple of degrees that get taken by used car salesmen. The problem is there is "book smarts" and "street smarts" and just because you have one does NOT mean you have the other and in today's society you really do need both.

Now as far as the test in TFA? You'd probably need to give them an eye exam before giving them this "test" as that would be hard as hell to do if you didn't have 20/20 or an up to date prescription on your glasses, but on a positive note at least its not as irritating as the stupid word questions on the IQ test. The one I remember went something like "your neighbor cuts down a tree limb which then falls and damages your brand new car" and every single response they had was just so opposite compared to how any normal human being would ever act I just had to sit there and think what kind of person writes those tests because obviously they had never dealt with other human beings in their entire life.

Uhhh...the article was discussing what we consider "modern" Ethernet, your classic Ethernet jack (RJ45 I think? Its too damned early for me to be technical) running a star topography, so I didn't think I needed to spell out what I was talking about since TFA was talking about the same thing. I have heard of grammar nazis but who would have thought there were networking nazis? Not talking about you, the 40 ACs that all rushed to "correct" me without even bothering to look at TFS much less TFA.

And I never got to set up an ARCNET so I can't speak to that but I set up waaay too many of the token ring thinnet and I personally was damned glad when it died. Now if we can only get 1Gbps routers that do IPV6 as cheaply as we get the old 100Mbps IPV4 routers I'll be a happy camper.