mattso - Slashdot User

Comment Re:I got mine weeks ago, haven't bought one game (Score 0) 279

by mattso on Tuesday June 25, 2013 @05:33PM (#44105727) Attached to: Ouya Android Game Console Launches, Quickly Sells Out

How is a demo free content? That sounds like demos work for you. The entire idea is to not waste the consumers money.

No, the idea is for the company making the console to not have to fund any game development. By requiring every game be "free to play" they dodge the expensive of having to make first party titles. If nothing else you can play their console for free.

See this slashdot article on how demos lower sales http://games.slashdot.org/story/09/01/17/0339230/do-game-demos-have-an-adverse-effect-on-sales

Comment I got mine weeks ago, haven't bought one game (Score 4, Informative) 279

by mattso on Tuesday June 25, 2013 @04:47PM (#44105091) Attached to: Ouya Android Game Console Launches, Quickly Sells Out

I got my Ouya a few weeks ago. I feel sorry for the people that were part of the Kickstarter but haven't gotten theirs. I had a tracking number for weeks but the US Post office delivered it before the tracking number ever was recognized. DHL from Hong Kong is not exactly a good shipping partner. They took the cheap route on shipping and it looks like it really hurt them. Doing order fulfillment from HK was a mistake. They should have bulk shipped them to the US and shipped them out from here.

As for it's value as a game console. It's kind of disappointing. I've yet to actually pay money for any games, since not one of the demo versions were interesting enough. While the Tegra 3 is a decent chip, somehow they have managed to make it have about the same power as an old SNES. Oddly enough Final Fantasy 3 is one of the few name brand titles. A best seller on the SNES.

As as platform for Android development (one of the reasons I got it) it is fairly disappointing. Their "every game has a demo" model pretty much means anyone developing for it is giving them free content. It' is rare that a game will convince me with a great demo. More often than not a demo just gives me enough to know it is not worth buying.

It also has strange issues with it's sleep mode/power on (I almost always have to walk up and press the button on the top). The gamepad feels awful. The box itself is not exactly easy to place in the living room.

It does seems like a good addition to my collection of failed consoles though, joining my Atari Jaguar and 3DO (among others).

Comment Re:Today Microsoft Officially Died (Score 1) 363

by mattso on Tuesday November 06, 2012 @08:32PM (#41901885) Attached to: Nvidia Doubles Linux Driver Performance, Slips Steam Release Date

Valve has made no promises about any future games. Or even announcements about future games. Just a handful of announcements about the beta Steam and beta TF2. That's it. And no one at Valve can promise ANYTHING about future development (even Gabe). Every Valve employee is their own boss. Unless people sign up to do the work, the ports won't get done.

Submission + - The Privatization of Copyright Lawmaking (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 12, 2011 @08:59PM

An anonymous reader writes: "The biggest misperception about SOPA is that it is somehow unprecedented or extraordinary. It is not. SOPA represents just the latest example of copyright law defined and controlled not by the government but by private entities. Copyright owners will deploy SOPA in the same way they have behaved in the past: to extend out their rights. They will disrupt sites that do not infringe a copyright, interfere with fair uses of copyrighted works, and take other steps that evade the limits that the Copyright Act sets on a copyright owner’s actual rights."

Submission + - FBI seizes servers in VA (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Axolotl_Rose on Tuesday June 21, 2011 @09:57PM

Axolotl_Rose writes: FBI seizes servers disrupting the service of several clients of a hosting company in Reston, VA including Digital One.

3D Blu-ray Spec Finalized, PS3 Supported 157

Posted by Soulskill on Friday December 18, 2009 @03:06AM from the but-at-least-one-dimension-will-have-drm dept.

Lucas123 writes "The Blu-ray Disc Association announced today that it has finalized the specification for Blu-ray 3-D discs. The market for 3-D, which includes 3-D enabled televisions, is expected to be $15.8 billion by 2015. Blu-ray 3-D will create a full 1080p resolution image for both eyes using MPEG4-MVC format. Even though two hi-def images are produced, the overhead is typically only 50% compared to equivalent 2D content. The spec also allows PS3 game consoles to play Blu-ray 3-D content. 'The specification also incorporates enhanced graphic features for 3D. These features provide a new experience for users, enabling navigation using 3D graphic menus and displaying 3D subtitles positioned in 3D video.'"

ASCAP Seeks Licensing Fees For Guitar Hero Arcade 146

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday December 16, 2009 @07:55AM from the understanding-is-too-much-effort dept.

Self Bias Resistor writes "According to a post on the Arcade-Museum forums, ASCAP is demanding an annual $800 licensing fee from at least one operator of a Guitar Hero Arcade machine, citing ASCAP licensing regulations regarding jukeboxes. An ASCAP representative allegedly told the operator that she viewed the Guitar Hero machine as a jukebox of sorts. The operator told ASCAP to contact Raw Thrills, the company that sells the arcade units. The case is ongoing and GamePolitics is currently seeking clarification of the story from ASCAP."

NYT's "Games To Avoid" an Ironic, Perfect Gamer Wish List 189

Posted by Soulskill on Friday December 11, 2009 @07:48AM from the more-or-less dept.

MojoKid writes "From October to December, the advertising departments of a thousand companies exhort children to beg, cajole, and guilt-trip their parents for all manner of inappropriate digital entertainment. As supposedly informed gatekeepers, we sadly earthbound Santas are reduced to scouring the back pages of gaming review sites and magazines, trying to evaluate whether the tot at home is ready for Big Bird's Egg Hunt or Bayonetta. Luckily, The New York Times is here to help. In a recent article provokingly titled 'Ten Games to Cross off Your Child's Gift List,' the NYT names its list of big bads — the video games so foul, so gruesome, so perverse that we'd recommend you buy them immediately — for yourself. Alternatively, if you need gift ideas for the surly, pale teenager in your home whose body contains more plastic then your average d20, this is the newspaper clipping to stuff in your pocket. In other words, if you need a list like this to understand what games to not stuff little Johnny's stocking with this holiday season, you've got larger issues you should concern yourself with. We'd suggest picking up an auto-shotty and taking a few rounds against the horde — it's a wonderful stress relief and you're probably going to need it."

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