That's exactly what WarCraft 1 was. It used the Dune 2 control scheme and included silly restrictions like forcing you to build roads before you could build buildings next to them just like Dune 2 forced you to build cement slabs. I want to say you had to build units centrally like Dune 2, but that may be wrong. WarCraft 1 also ran tediously slowly and I don't remember it having a game speed control.

WarCraft 2 added a bunch of new controls, like right-click to move instead of right-click to cancel, removed some of the dumber building restrictions, and added the game speed control. Oh, and also upgraded the multiplayer component from 2 players (yes, WC1 only supported 2 players) to 8 players.

StarCraft changed things up by making it so that the various units for different races weren't carbon copies of one another, made it so multiplayer matches started with your command center/nexus/hive and 4 peons instead of a single peon with enough resources to build a town hall.

And then WarCraft 3 came out, which added Hero units. The less said about those the better.

A few problems I can see in your statements:

1. Unlike the DS and Wii, the 3DS and WiiU use system-wide friend codes (or system+account-wide, I'm not sure since my 3DS only has one user), not per-game friend codes. The way the DS worked wouldn't allow for this, but the Wii did... just Nintendo didn't use them that way.

2. As I recall, all the other consoles also require you to have both sides add each other as friends before they can see what you're doing. I may be misremembering since it's been years since I've registered my PSN or Xbox Live accounts, but I doubt it.

The only thing friends codes gain you over usernames is that it's harder to spoof numbers.

I'm going to stop you right there to point out that the SNES sound chip was the Sony SPC-700 and the next generation of that same chip powered the PS1's sound system.

That depends on what market you were in.

In North America, the Dreamcast launched exactly 4 years (to the day) after the PS1, 3 years after the N64, and just a measly year before the significantly more powerful PS2.

It didn't help that Sony was (and still is) good at the hype machine.

OK, lets look at the current generation (well... current because the WiiU is out) and previous 3 generations.

Current:
WiiU: Weaker hardware than its competitors, but only slightly cheaper than the announced launch prices for the other two consoles. Isn't doing so well at the moment. Third-party developers are hesitant to support it.
Xbox One: May flop due to marketing mistakes by Microsoft and their insistence that the Kinect is mandatory.
PS4. Current predicted winner of the next console generation thanks to mistakes MS made with the Xbox One and the tepid reception of the WiiU.

Previous:
Wii: Weaker hardware than its competitors, but a low price to match. Managed to pull third-party developers back in. Outsold everyone else.
Xbox 360: Did pretty decently throughout, but got burned a bit by the Red Ring Of Death issue.
PS3: Flopped at launch due to high prices (cost more than two times the Wii's price) and new unusual programming architecture. Managed to catch up to the Xbox 360 in the last few years of this generation.

2000-2005 gen:
Xbox: New vendor. Didn't do that great. Only killer end-user feature over the PS2 was Xbox Live.
PS2: Harder to program for than the PS1, but still managed to keep massive third-party support. Outsold everyone else.
GameCube: Decent hardware but lacked third party support due to previous generation. The loss of Rare and Silicon Knights during this time frame only exacerbated this problem.
Dreamcast: Didn't do so hot, Sega left the market about halfway through this generation.

1995-2000 gen:
Saturn: Biggest flop of the generation. In part because of Sega's braindead strategy of releasing the 32x, a competing "32-bit" addon for the Genesis. Also cost $100 more than the PS1 and launched with no warning.
PS1: Easiest console to develop for. Launched $100 cheaper than the Saturn. Outsold everyone else.
N64: Sticking with cartridges lost Nintendo the majority of its third-party support.. This came back to bite them in the following generation.

I'm not going to address Nintendo's handhelds simply because they've dominated the market since their introduction in 1989 and have essentially kept the company running even when it was doing poorly.

Pretty much the only good Wii titles are first-party titles.

Actually, living in the real MI (Michigan)... hey Canada, can we join you guys up there? Maybe merge us into Ontario?

I can't find the numbers, but I recall that China exports more goods to the United States than any other country. Which is where they get the money to import goods from Germany in the first place.

You had me up until said you "all developers".

Developers need the Java Developers Kit, which notably doesn't prompt you to install toolbars. Nor does the JRE installer on the Java developer site (which used to be java.sun.com).

Unfortunately, unless you know to grab the installer from there...

For good or bad... Java's younger cousin C# / .NET.

So, what does your code do if an end-user passes -1 which would get stored in your unsigned value? And as a reminder, your argument is that you don't have to do bounds checking for the lower bound.

So... your correcting him by pointing out that you are using an MSPRP $54.99 controller instead of an MSRP $39.99 controller?

Except in PHP where certain functions change their behavior depending on what values are set in an .ini file.

There are two version of the Surface tablets. The first is the Surface RT that uses an ARM chip and runs Windows RT... and can't run existing Windows applications. The second is the Surface Pro that uses an Intel chip and runs Windows 8.

The smart thing to do would be to only make Surface Pros for the new models. Unfortunately, they've decided to make new versions of both.

The Surface 2 replaces the Surface RT and the Surface Pro 2 replaces the Surface Pro.

Since this happens if the owner starts playing any game, this doesn't really address what the GP was asking about. One player will still be logged off.