Algorithms themselves do not have transistors to double.

Not just the program's source code... that's not even required. You have source code (and the legal right to mess with it provided you sharealike) for the platform itself.

Imagine how much better WINE would be if they didn't need to spend so much time trying to figure out how Windows worked... and could just read its source-code.

Not true. You're allowed to view, modify, and port dependency code in open source OSes.

Tell that to the judge who ruled in Apple's favour or Apple's lawyers who posed that argument. Fact of the matter is, a program making a copy of itself from a hard-disk drive to RAM is in violation of the DMCA.

They have a don't-ask-don't-tell policy to closet Android users.

Actually Linux (and similar copylefted OSes and libraries) doesn't qualify as part of this because you can legally uproot support provided you retain copyleft.

Many other platforms are becoming increasingly difficult to emulate or otherwise provide support to applications outside of the original platform. PS2 emulation is dead-in-the-water without an encrypted dump from a real PS2... Apple sues unauthorized vendors of Apple products.

... why? Because everyone who uses (read: turns on) a Mac violates the DMCA -- and Apple reserves the right to sue you if you piss them off for some reason.

Apple is the epitome of ridiculous when it comes to locking down and locking in their customers. But yes... videogame platforms are just as bad. That's what you get when you pay people to be middlemen between your digital hardware and your digital art... they exert the rights you gave them for being middlemen.

Yeah it's because there's not enough RAM in the modern consoles to look good at split screen for the most part. We've also seen it last generation where the only thing separating many Xbox 1 games and PS2 games was that the Xbox had splitscreen multiplayer and the PS2 did not.

Whoa whoa whoa whoa, I did hear that one before.

Gentlemen... two words. Zombie Snitches.

That's not true at all... ... you can derive value even if you don't sell your product.

Ad supported also isn't the only other way either.

Exactly what I'm nervous about... do indies or hobbyists need to pay obscene bills to be certified that "yes there's blood on the screen" for something that they might make ridiculously little on, if they charge for it at all?

Well that is a decent solution actually... use the PC -- do what you want with it -- pay less for it -- not have tonnes of redundant hardware and accessories -- don't have a platform developer to pull the plug and deprecate every piece of art in its catalog (Poor Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath) -- use whatever control mechanism the game developer wishes to support (rather than the platform developer) -- not pay license fees to said platform owner.

If only an open platform like Linux actually had enough marketing to stretch its wings.

He's (now) still talking about using videocard hardware... just not the Direct3D/OpenGL libraries to interface with them.

So it's not a memory bandwidth issue -- because the component that's used for the massively-parallel processing would essentially still be a videocard.

Don't confuse "Software Rendering" with "CPU-Only" rendering. The videocard will still be there... along with its memory and massively parallel many-simple-core structure. The difference is instead of making Direct3D and OpenGL function calls, you'll be making code that looks sort-of like a very very very multithreaded software renderer.

We already have as large draw distances as we want. The question is how much detail do you want there.

Framerate locking IS common... because on the console with set hardware you can optimize to hit one specific framerate... ... and then when you port to the PC you need to keep the framerate locked (or have a REALLY painful porting process) because of all the assumptions you made making the console version assuming the framerate will always be 30 fps (like with Gametime, etc)

Wii was actually one of the only consoles to NOT be sold at a loss.

2006 Article