Pag

The Courrier was a great concept and it's too bad it was canned. Microsoft really seems to have a hard time releasing innovative concepts...

When Apple announced the iPad, I was let down. Here's a highly creative company with a tradition of innovation that's releasing a rehash of their previous product: an iPod Touch with a larger screen. I don't feel like the iPad lets me do anything more than any other device, it's just a convenient way to check websites from the couch. Big deal. (If you disagree, tell me: what does the iPad let me do that my iPod Touch doesn't? Is it worth another $500?) I don't want to just consume media, I want to be active, and the iPad isn't made for that.

Microsoft came out with this great concept. The Courrier was an innovative new approach to touch screen interface, one focused on being active and creative. You could take notes, draw, organize your stuff all the while having a second screen for reference material. It wasn't just another way to watch TV on the go. I would've used this on a daily basis.

Yes, it probably would've been more expensive than the iPad. So what? It's not the same market at all -- the iPad is Apple's touchscreen netbook, the Courrier is a new approach to the digital notepad. And I don't see why the device couldn't have been done. There's no technology in there that's not already available. A 1Ghz CPU with 512 MB of RAM would've been enough, and cellphones ship with that these days.

My guess is that Microsoft's bean counters got scared. Creative ideas are riskier, and I bet they think copying Apple is the safe way to go. Of course, they ensure they won't be a leader this way -- you can't be a leader if you just follow.

To finish this (excessively) long comment, I'll just say that I'm let down by Engadget's comments these days. They're just overrun with fanboys. You can't even discuss which products are interesting or not without people jumping to the defense of their favorite company. Yes, you like Apple/HP/Microsoft. We get that. No need to claim that everybody with different needs or preferences is a shill or a hater. (To all those who are open minded and who can appreciate the quality of stuff from other companies and admit flaws in the offerings of their favorite company: good for you)

The Vaio P costs "only" $1000 in its basic configuration. You'll only pay $2000 if you want a large SSD drive and a cover made of crocodile leather.

"The gaming gods hath forsaken us."

Indubitably.

The gaming industry dug its own grave when it comes to creativity. After years of sequels and franchise titles, is it any surprise nobody's left who cares about creativity? They all left to seek other form of entertainment that values it more...

It's like comic books. While the rest of the world has enjoyed comics in a variety of style for a variety of markets (think mangas and European comics), America has entirely focused on franchise super-heroes that sell to male teenagers. Gaming is headed the same way: a few popular franchises all targeted at the same market.

Stylish games like Okami would sell better to adults, but overall the industry isn't even trying to sell to adults (with the exception of casual PC games). Look at movies: teenagers go see, year after year, derivative horror movies because they're young enough for it to seem new. Adults prefer more varied stuff because they've seen the clichés already.

Of course, that's (in part) why so much entertainment is targetted at younger audiences. It's just easier to sell to a less sophisticated market.

aZn_1080p, do you get paid to pimp the PS3? The amount of time you must spend just to write (bad) ads for Sony's product amazes me. If you don't get paid, why do you (and other rabid fanboys, for any platform) do it? I can understand preferring a platform over another, but I can't understand people who jump on every available opportunity to put down the other guy's system. Are you so insecure that you must bash other people's choices to validate your own? Do you just lack a life and love spending all your time trolling message boards? I'd really like some insight into the fanboy/troll psyche...

By the way, making illogical arguments isn't going to convince many people to switch to your side. Who wants to side with the madman on his soapbox? Of course, that's assuming you're doing this for any reason other than annoying people...

Current episodic games are closer to a sequence of expansion packs than anything really episodic. A few levels every 6-8 months doesn't give me much of a sense of regular episodes...

What I'd like to see is something closer to TV: about 1 hour of entertainment released at the same time each week. Like for TV, you'd be anticipating the next episode, wondering what would happen next week. It would work great with games like GTA: the world could stay the same during a whole season (with a new city each season) and you'd get a new mission each week.

Of course, pricing would have to change. Instead of paying per episode, you could buy a subscription. Or, if the game has advertisements it could be free like TV.

Putting a cliff-hanger at the end of an expansion pack isn't anything different from what we've seen in the past. Weekly content, now that's how episodic gaming could rock.

Dr.Swiss, I used to have the same problem as you. Even though the volume slider is in the middle, I didn't get any sound. But if I'd move it, sound would come back -- it's some weird bug, I guess. He didn't mean to increase it from 0, but just move the volume slider a bit to get around the bug.

I'm always amazed that people look at the correlation between a violent person liking violent games, and come up with the idea that the violent game made the person violent. It makes much more sense to look at it the other way around: he liked violence and so liked violent entertainment, including games. What games did they expect him to play? Barbie Horse Adventures?

It makes sense that somebody who has sick dreams of doing a shoot-out in a school would like a game about that subject. It's much more of a stretch to think that he hadn't even considered doing this terrible act before playing the Columbine game and that somehow the game warped his sense of morality.

Hopefully no dumb laws will be created because of this tragedy. More people die each year of lighning strikes than from school shootings. We must not limit our liberties to try to avoid incredibly rare events.

For how much Nintendo insisted on the importance of innovation, there's an awful lot of sequels and licensed titles in that list...

For most of history, kids started working the farm at age 8 and mostly ate bread. In the 19th century, many children in England worked 6 days a week in coal mines. The modern concept of childhood didn't really become common until the 20th century, when industrialization and universal schooling made it impractical and unwanted for kids to work.

By that standard, kids never had it better than today. This article is just the same old story about how life was so much better in the past. People tend to wear rose-tinted glasses when looking back at the past.

Things change, entertainment changes. Your kids probably won't play the same things you did when you were a kid -- deal with it.