Kids Prefer To Play Games On Mobile Devices Over Consoles 250
New submitter chloealsop writes: The NPD Group has published a report showing that more kids age 2-17 are playing games on phones and tablets than on consoles in the U.S.. 45 percent of kids use a home PC for gaming, a drop of 22 points since 2013. "The largest and most surprising shift in the 2015 gaming ecosystem was kids' move away from the computer," NPD Group analyst Liam Callahan said in a press release. "In the past, the computer was considered the entry point for gaming for most kids, but the game has changed now that mobile has moved into that position. This may be related to a change in the behavior of parents that are likely utilizing mobile devices for tasks that were once reserved for computers."
PC dominates the gaming world (Score:4, Insightful)
PC gaming is a larger market than all other platforms... COMBINED.
The problem is that no one owns it and so big companies like to push the notion that the PC is shit. They talk about Xbox or PS4 or mobile and ignore that while there are lots of people that do that, it isn't where the meat and potatoes are of the gaming world.
Mobile gaming being the future? F'ing candy crush? Okay. Believe what you like there.
PS/Xbox is the future? Even industry insiders are saying that the consoles have maybe one or two more generations left in them at most.
The PC however... never been stronger. So by all means... keep shitting on it.
It makes about as much sense as those dumb shit articles that were saying that business was going to stop using desktop computers and shift entirely to web applications on phones and ipads. These are the sorts of comments you expect from people that don't actually know what they're talking about.
If you understand gaming then you understand that the PC dominates and you understand why.
If you understand office programs... word processors, spread sheets, databases... then you know the desktop PC isn't going anywhere.
The people that suggest otherwise are clueless media nitwits or lying through their teeth corporate trolls trying to get people to use their crippled systems where they can jack up costs for no reason.
Cue console peasants telling me why consoles are great... I'd love to hear you so much as try you filthy fucking animals.
Re:PC dominates the gaming world (Score:5, Funny)
Re:PC dominates the gaming world (Score:4, Funny)
I read between his lines, and all I got was carriage return and line feed.
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I don't want to go out on a limb here, but if I read between the lines I seem to be picking up that you may be pro-PC?
But he's right, the PC market is huge as the PS4/XBONE continue to lose money hand over fist.
Mobile games are a threat to consoles as they're attacking the consoles bread and butter, the casual market. This isn't the case for the PC. Casual games just dont sell on the PC because people expect them for free on the PC (see: Farmville). Without casual players the consoles will flounder. Nintendo will be the only one left standing as Sony and Microsoft are selling their consoles as loss leaders (Nintendo is
Consoles are easy to choose, use, and afford (Score:3)
console peasants telling me why consoles are great... I'd love to hear you so much as try
I've tried to sum up Team Peasant's strongest arguments in an article titled Consoles are easy [pineight.com]. In case you don't want to click through, what consoles lose in flexibility they gain in ease:
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How many players can use one PC? (Score:2)
Why couldn't they just as well share the PC?
That depends on how many good games support using two to four controllers plugged into a USB hub. I've seen some games whose console version allows shared-screen multiplayer but whose PC version allows only LAN or online multiplayer. And a lot of games designed around a shared screen rarely if ever leave consoles. Bomberman hasn't seen a PC native release outside East Asia since the Windows 95 era [wikipedia.org], and 4-player platform fighters tend to be stuck on a console even if they aren't first-party like Super Smash
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I think in general more console games are intended for sharing (ie, all looking at same screen). But more PC games are intended as single player, or playing with asshat strangers online.
I got one PC game that someone recommended to me. But it's difficult since you can't do much of anything unless you have a second player with a second controller. Sadly, this was before Steam offered refunds.
Motion sickness in co-op games (Score:2)
For multiple players to work on a single screen [without causing motion sickness], it has to be something fairly simple, like tennis with a fixed camera
Many shared-screen games, such as fighting games and whatever Bomberman is, do have a mostly fixed camera. If anything, they just move the camera side-to-side and possibly zoom out when the characters get too far apart. But I'll grant that co-op adventure games such as The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon might be a bit more prone to causing motion sickness in susceptible people.
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Shared screen? not important? Nintendo almost designed the Wii then the WiiU for same screen multiplayer. Mario Kart, Smash Bros, the newer Super Marios, Mario Party, ... all feature same-screen multiplayer. There is a social aspect to same-screen multiplayer that other games don't have, I have a group of gamer friends, ranging from semi-casual to quite hardcore, with different interests, and we all enjoy a game of Smash Bros together.
And BTW, a WiiU is $300, previous generation consoles are even cheaper an
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Difficult to use consoles. Tiny controllers are unergonomic, sized for children, and intended for use on a couch.
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It's not necessarily whether you are capable of managing a gaming PC as whether you are willing to spend time doing so. This becomes especially important once a full time job reduces your free time.
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if you can't handle a PC for gaming effortlessly then you have no business commenting on /.
Get your monkey console peasant ass out of here.
/. alone does not a market make (Score:2)
12 year olds can manage a PC
It's not necessarily whether you are capable of managing a gaming PC as whether you are willing to spend time doing so.
if you can't handle a PC for gaming effortlessly then you have no business commenting on /.
Sadly, the Slashdot population alone does not make a video game or gaming platform profitable. This means it's not whether I personally can build and maintain a gaming PC as much as whether a substantial number of people can.
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12 year olds can handle it.
Last comment. I'm not interested in the issue with you.
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you just made it clear that you are more interested in the way I said something rather than what I said.
In the real world, how we say things matters.
the PC is the superior gaming platform.
For what?
For people whose only game is WoW?
For people who play a single map in LoL/DOTA over and over again?
For those who play cs_office or The warehouse over and over again?
For those who care more about e-peens than actually playing games?
For the former Spectrum lads in western europe and the former commies living in Eastern Europe and Russia who hate consoles because they got so used to pirating everything?
Every platform has it's plusses and minuses, including
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Adults realize if they want to convince others of a point of view that denigrating or insulting others doesn't help. For example, Do you think that those Linux guys who insult windows users as "idiot sheeple" are going to convince any to switch?
YOU are the kindergardener in this situation because YOU think everyone else is an idiot, or sheeple or whatever. Perhaps the problem is not them, but YOU and your ego.
The presto-intellectual pretensions of childish twits is not to be taken seriously.
Pot...Kettle. You must be real fun at parties. But I suspect you don't socialize with other peo
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If these arguments are weak and lame, I'd like to see your strong and agile counterarguments.
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You know it's always you PC gaming assholes who need to have your egos reassured.
So rest reassured, the PC probably isn't going anywhere for awhile, and yes, you're probably getting a more powerful system that's cheaper blah blah blah.
Whatever.
I don't understand why your lot feels so threatened by console gaming.
But there's things to consider.
First, the death of console gaming might not happen due to strengths in the PC industry. Lack luster financial performance from Sony isn't due to the PS3 and PS4 not s
Unapproved executable code (Score:2)
ability to mod(which; given USB is available on all consoles; if modding were that important; we'd have it on consoles).
I think the inability to mod is in large part caused by console makers' unwillingness to allow any unapproved executable code to execute. Otherwise, amateur users could make a "total conversion" of some game that would in theory compete with other licensed developers' products. The closest you'll get to official moddability on a console are probably those few games that put an internal level editor front and center, such as LittleBigPlanet, WarioWare DIY, and Super Mario Maker. And even those don't let the
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A lot of game logic is in Lua or Python. Breaking the game out of that logic level just isn't a problem. So I don't think that running unapproved code(IE: Cheating and piracy and making sure that they get a cut for games that that are being played on their platform) is their primary reason why there's no mod infrastructure.
I mean, the PS3 version of UT3 supported a bunch of Unreal Tournament 3 mods.
The problem is is that Sony and Microsoft and Nintendo just don't believe there's any gains to be made support
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console is just a limited pc... if you want to pay more than pc prices for less than a pc... waste your money. its a dumb choice for dumb people.
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PS4 and XB1 share the same x86 cores as most pcs these days(aside from oddballs like RMS' old Lemote Yeelong), but using a nearly commodity CPU has been true for all of gaming history.
The 2600, NES(and the SNES, except with a 16bit variant) used a 6502 CPU(same family as the Apple 2 and the Commodore 64), the PlayStation and Nintendo 64 used MIPS, used in SGI machines and the like, the Genesis used the same 68k CPU the Macintosh did, the only time things get weird is that for two and a half generations, wha
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Show you?... any gaming laptop... here you say "it isn't 400 dollars"... it also is more than just a gaming machine.
So the cost is the cost of a computer + a gaming machine.
800 dollars can get you a gaming laptop.
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Yeah but the budget isn't the sole factor. Does it sit cleanly and neatly next to my tv? Is it quiet? Is it cool to the touch? Is the performance going to be consistent? Are the games going to always play nice with a controller?
Like, I don't care if it can do more than play games. I have a computer for that but it doesn't sit nicely next to my tv and it's an iMac with a four year old GPU so it doesn't run MGS V. It also does everything else I want to do well enough that I don't want to replace it with anoth
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PC gaming is a larger market than all other platforms... COMBINED.
What are you drinking because I want some!
PC Gaming is expected to see worldwide revenue of $27 billion in 2017 [webpronews.com].
As you can see, PC Gaming and Console revenue worldwide is pretty comparable in 2015 [pcper.com]. Both pull in a bit under $25 billion.
According to Gartner, the Gaming industry was projected to be $111 billion in 2015 [tomshardware.com].
So, if Gartner's projection was roughly right, and PC Gaming & Console Gaming's worldwide revenues are about $25 billion each, who is grabbing the remaining $61 billion? Well, acco
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http://jonpeddie.com/press-rel... [jonpeddie.com]
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Most office progarms are now or going offline into cloud. I really wanted to use Open/Libre office more, but frankly Google Docs is just better for my relatively simple office needs. This trend will continue. The only real question is what the 'office computer' of the future will look like. We currently have
Desktop PC's as we know and love them today:
Adv: Low cost over the life of the product, works with most software businesses need
Dis: Not portable for some use cases, so hybrid laptop usually necessary, h
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http://jonpeddie.com/press-rel... [jonpeddie.com]
Duh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Handheld consoles (Score:2)
Can't exactly bring the console to Red Lobster
If you want to bring your console to Pinocchio's favorite restaurant (source: chapter 13 [gutenberg.org]), sure you can. Just make sure it's a PlayStation Vita.
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Handheld consoles should be included in the "mobile device" category, which is actually what the article talks about.
The featured article doesn't mention PlayStation Vita or Nintendo 3DS either way. Those systems have thumb sticks and physical buttons, unlike the vast majority of mobile phones and tablets that aren't made by JXD. Not every style of game adapts well to a flat sheet of glass.
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Oh, if only there were a console we could bring the Red Lobster. We could call is a 3DS, or a PS Vita, perhaps. Alas that there is no such thing.
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Can't exactly bring the console to Red Lobster
True
but you can bring the phone.
True also, but you had better not be playing games on it. If the family is springing $100 for a meal, then you are going to spend the time with the family. If you want to play games, you can stay home on the console and eat leftover Tuna Salad Casserole.
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Actually, Red Lobster is solid middle class, right there with the Olive Garden. Yes, it's no where near as good as other establishments, but for what they offer, it's pretty cheap and kid friendly relatively speaking. Now if it's just you and your significant other (kids not with you or applicable), there are better places to eat out for sure.
It's definitely solid middle class, but the prices are upper class, at least to me. But I gather that for most people spending $100 on a meal is not really a big deal. Unfortunately, I am not in the class of people that can afford to budget $36,000 a year just for dinner.
When strapped into a car seat (Score:5, Interesting)
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But once the child is big enough to use a seat belt without a booster seat, what exactly is so hard about playing games on a laptop?
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Keeping it still on your legs during turns, any game requiring a mouse is pretty much out (generally speaking), and at least the laptops I've ever used were very susceptible to being impossible to use if the sun hit the screen.
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But once the child is big enough to use a seat belt without a booster seat, what exactly is so hard about playing games on a laptop>
There probably already is a mobile device in the car, while there probably is not a laptop in the car.
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It is tough to play games on a PC.
Well, you wouldn't want them doing that anyway, nor playing with a tablet. That's one more loose and heavy article to go flying around the cabin in the event of an accident or emergency maneuver.
South Park did it (Score:3)
They don't prefer playing on mobile devices... they prefer watching others play on mobile devices!!!
Grandpa!!!
It's not surprising really - I'm a gamer and while I do still play games on the console and my PC my smartphone is just...convenient. The console requires sitting in front of the TV and not watching TV. Same with the PC (although a laptop is more flexible here if it's powerful enough for the game).
Portable games systems require carrying them along with you and while I've got a younger cousin that will carry both his smartphone and DS (and play games on his DS while watching Youtube videos on his phone) that's generally a hassle.
Smartphone? Always with me.
Age 2? (Score:2)
Jeeze! Now I know why they always look cross-eyed... People are gonna look pretty weird in 40 years.
Completely unsurprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Us techies always think it's about power or performance, but mobility is a transformative feature. Many people prioritize it over nearly every customer experience feature we can offer in products today. It's largely why Apple came to dominate smartphones. They offered the world's most mobile handheld computer first.
If I were Microsoft or Sony, I would be very worried. Most of my gaming time used to be on PC games. Then I progressed to consoles and now nearly all of my gaming time is on my iPad or iPhone with minimal laptop time for games not on iOS. Smart gaming companies are already pivoting into mobile gaming where the majority of the money is in the gaming industry [fortune.com].
Windows Phone and PlayStation Vita (Score:2)
mobility is a transformative feature. [...] If I were Microsoft or Sony, I would be very worried.
I don't see why. Microsoft has Windows Phone and Sony has PlayStation Vita. If those companies have mismanaged their mobile platforms, it's their loss.
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I have yet to find a mobile game that is transformative enough to embrace the platform's massive shortcomings. PC gaming is moving into Citizen Kane territory, Mobile gaming is devolving into trash TV levels of inanity. Dreck is always popular, its still dreck.
Oh, I play a few mobile games. On the Bluestacks App Player on my PC. I don't play games on the phone. The screen is too small and the UI sucks. Plus I enjoy my gaming time. I don't want to play games when I am out with people, or sitting on the toilet, or waiting for a bus, or whatever. I want to enjoy my gaming time, so I have a time when I do that, and it is when I am at home. When I play games at home, I prefer to play them on a large screen with a good UI.
Shocked (Score:2)
I'm shocked. I really had no idea. Seeing kids locked into their mobile devices 24/7 did nothing to clue me in.
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I'm shocked. I really had no idea. Seeing kids locked into their mobile devices 24/7 did nothing to clue me in.
Well, to be fair, you were probably too busy posting on /. to notice.
We didn't have mobile phones when I was a kid (Score:2)
This is nice and all, but here is a few things.
This is the first generation to have mobile phone games. We never had something like this before. Plus the cost of smart phones are high, so in the past a console was an easy Xmas present every 5 years, but now cell phones are replaced every year.
Not to mention almost everyone is using a smartphone all the time now. I can't walk down the street without finding at least 50% of the people watching their phone.
So ya, we have these cool smartphones that can d
Not just playing games... (Score:3)
I have a 5 year old and a 2 year old. The 2 year old is a Peppa Pig addict, but it's not just any old peppa pig. Oh noes, it's "I watch Piggies on daddies phone!" "no darling" "I watch Piggies on daddies tablet", then weirdly it is "I watch Piggies on daddies 'puter" and then finally once all other options have been attempted it will finally be "I watch piggies on tv in the lounge!"
The 5 year old given half a chance would be surgically attached to the tablet. Managing their screen time is something we have to do everyday, which is a little sad.
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I'm sure your parents said the same about your attachment to that same TV that's been carried through to adulthood even though it is - by your own account - fairly redundant.
And parents before that moaned about the children's attachment to the wireless that they never had, and so on, and so forth.
Manage their time, of course, like any sensible parent you want them to experience the whole gamut. But as for myself it was books under bedcovers by torchlight and then, later, games consoles, even TV under the b
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I agree with everything you say except the photos. The difference though between me and them is that the tablets let them have essentially infinite access to what they want all the time. Where as when I grew up I might have read all the books in the house or there was nothing on TV I wanted to watch so I had to come up with something else to do.
So what happens is you have to restrict access to it to create a false scarcity so they will learn the skills of coming up with something else to do.
As for the pho
Zero Truism (Score:3)
Children are not fully formed human beings.
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Children are not fully formed human beings.
My experience has been that children start off wanting to be functioning members of society.
"mobilitis" (Score:2)
Re:Logic (Score:5, Insightful)
A bigger failure in logic is that kids 2-17 "choose" their gaming platform. As a parent, it is MY choice. I let my kids play with my iPad in the backseat, so they will shutup and let me drive. No way am I shelling out for a console.
Re:Logic (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other hand I wonder if being able to fill every idle moment with some easily provided stimulus is not terribly good for us. I'm certainly not immune to seeking diversion myself, but having to figure out how to entertain myself by reflecting on my thoughts or my environment can be very calming and can help bring me back down to earth when I get too caught-up in things. For me, road trips and vacations to remote areas are a way to find that calm and to detach from my every day life for awhile, and have been since I was an adolescent.
Re:Logic (Score:4, Interesting)
Also there's a crap ton of free/free-2-pay-more titles on mobile... kids don't have money, they go where it's free... huge leap in logic there. Also, no console tax.
Google, Amazon, and Apple also tax purchases (Score:3)
Also, no console tax.
Is the console tax really that much more than the 30 percent tax that Google, Amazon, and Apple charge in their respective app stores? No. In fact, it's exactly the same, as Apple announced an App Store with a 30 percent tax months after Microsoft announced Xbox Live Indie Games with a 30 percent tax.
Re:Google, Amazon, and Apple also tax purchases (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, no console tax.
Is the console tax really that much more than the 30 percent tax that Google, Amazon, and Apple charge in their respective app stores? No. In fact, it's exactly the same, as Apple announced an App Store with a 30 percent tax months after Microsoft announced Xbox Live Indie Games with a 30 percent tax.
The "console tax" is not a fee that Microsoft or Sony charges, it's a price discrepancy between PC/mobile versions of a game and the version that appears on consoles. It's not a consistent thing but more often than not prices are higher on consoles than elsewhere.
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The AAA titles that I have noticed recently cost the same $59.99 on the consoles that they do on the PC.
The little crap games available on Mobile are a whole different category. Most of them are not worth the $0.99 that is charged for them. There is another category of $7.99 games on mobile, but those are almost always just ports from console games by the big publishers.
Believe me, some of us have searched long and hard for anything worth playing on 'mobile' that is in app stores. It gets to the point wh
Re:Google, Amazon, and Apple also tax purchases (Score:5, Informative)
As I said it's not consistent but you'll see it in things like: Call of Duty: Advanced Warefare Gold Edition, it costs $64.99 on PC and last generation consoles but $74.99 on current gen consoles. Civilization Revolution, $3.49 on mobile, $29.99 on consoles. Toy Soldiers: War Chest - $19.99 on PC, $25.75 on Xbox One. I could go on... I could also show examples of the opposite occurring but in far lower numbers.
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Civilization Revolution, $3.49 on mobile, $29.99 on consoles.
For one thing, console game pricing has to account for the possibility of resale, for which the publisher receives no revenue. For another, does the mobile version of Civilization have the "pay or wait years" mechanic like that of Game of War [cracked.com]? Some things in that game literally take 58 years to research without paying extra.
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The $29.99 price was from the XBL store, the retail copy is actually $19.99. And no, there's no microtransactions. The content is the same.
Re: Logic (Score:5, Interesting)
Price is definitely a big factor. If my boys want a new console game, it will cost me around $60. A new tablet game, though, is usually under $1.99 if not totally free. I could buy my boys a new tablet game every two weeks for an entire year for less than the cost of one console game.
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I went the other route: Console games but only once they reach a reasonable price point. $7.50 average buy price.
Error -103: This software title is not in service (Score:2)
Console games but only once they reach a reasonable price point. $7.50 average buy price.
I used to try that. But by the time a PlayStation 2 game hit the bargain bin, its online features would likely have been shut off permanently. Google DNAS error 103. Has this been fixed on PlayStation 4?
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I'm an Xbox gamer so I'm not sure about PS. On Xbox the major titles will sometimes have dedicated servers that shutdown but more often the XBL service is available for matchmaking, sometimes it has both systems, dedicated for certain types of gameplay and XBL matchmaking for the rest. To give you an idea of the frequency, about 800 of 50,500 achievements are discontinued from servers shutting down.
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I agree: When Xbox, Nintendo DS, and Wii matchmaking, shut down the vast majority of it shut down at the same time for the whole platform. So how long does Xbox Live matchmaking for Xbox 360 have left?
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I agree: When Xbox, Nintendo DS, and Wii matchmaking, shut down the vast majority of it shut down at the same time for the whole platform. So how long does Xbox Live matchmaking for Xbox 360 have left?
I don't think it will shut down. The service is ubiquitous between all of its platforms so even GFWL is still able to use XBL matchmaking where it hasn't been patched out.
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I DO think it will shut down for xbox 360 whenever it feels convenient for Microsoft,
as it has ALREADY been shut down for the xbox for years. Even your gamertag gets lost.
What a shame.
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I don't think it will shut down. The service is ubiquitous between all of its platforms
So then why did they shut it down for the original Xbox? People were still paying for that!
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more often the XBL service is available for matchmaking, sometimes it has both systems, dedicated for certain types of gameplay and XBL matchmaking for the rest.
this is even worse. XBL or PSN cost $50/year. F that! they can KMA.
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more often the XBL service is available for matchmaking, sometimes it has both systems, dedicated for certain types of gameplay and XBL matchmaking for the rest.
this is even worse. XBL or PSN cost $50/year. F that! they can KMA.
I can't speak to PSN but XBL you now get 48 free games per year to keep (I think PSN is more games per year but you don't get to keep them, once your subscription lapses you lose everything).
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it's not about keeping the games, it's about the online matchmaking or other stuff like GTA V online. F that, I repeat!
Re:Logic (Score:5, Insightful)
As a parent, it is MY choice. I let my kids play with my iPad in the backseat, so they will shutup and let me drive
Sounds like they are choosing more than you think.
Um, lots of kids choose (Score:4, Insightful)
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Agreed that kids are in way more control than adults are. Buy the age of 5 I asked my parents to stop having big birthday parties with a dozen plus neighborhood/school kids for me. Instead I asked for dinner and a movie with 2-3 of my closest friends. For years my parents thought I was anti-social and screwed up until I let them in on the secret that I had figured out those random classmates never get you the gifts you want, but instead get gifts they wanted so they can open and play with them at your party
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A bigger failure in logic is that kids 2-17 "choose" their gaming platform. As a parent, it is MY choice. I let my kids play with my iPad in the backseat, so they will shutup and let me drive. No way am I shelling out for a console.
Not just that, my kid would play w/ anything that I used. Since I was generally on a PC, that's what he'd come after. After I got my phone, he used that, and when my ex-wife got her iPad, he went to that.
A better story is my sister's. When her son was born, she'd use one of the iPad Baby tunes apps to pacify him. Later, he got interested in the iPad, as did my niece. End result is that they already have a few years of practice on the iPad and the phones of their parents. Recently, my sist
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With child labor laws, how are they going to find any money to save?
Go away, you're not 16 (Score:3, Interesting)
Child labour laws don't prevent children from working and earning money, it just limits what they can do and how much they can work.
And until 16, that's pretty close to zero, even during summer vacation in jurisdictions that have one. I'll summarize the situation in Indiana [in.gov]:
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Doing yardwork or housework for neighbors is exempt
Unless another kid already has the neighbors locked in. How is a kid who just turned 12 supposed to compete with incumbents?
as is working for a family business.
Good luck convincing your parents to start one in the first place.
Composite character (Score:2)
For the record, I'm not the jerk. I'm not even a parent. The fictional parents in my example are a composite of parents I've met and read about. But I wholeheartedly agree with you that they're jerks. But the question remains: What is a child with jerk parents supposed to do?
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A New Nintendo 3DS XL at $200 looks like a deal until you see an Android-powered JXD S7800B gaming tablet [jxdofficial.com] for $150.
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Re:Logic (Score:4, Informative)
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Because teenagers and young adults don't, and arguably have more places to be and more ability to get there without mom and dad driving them. But I can say without question that my kid ignores the WiiU, he loves his iPad and he loves his PC, it's consoles he doesn't seem to care for.
A flat sheet of glass (Score:2)
Why is this news?
Because it means kids are willing to forgo directional control (either arrow keys/WASD or a thumbstick) for a flat sheet of glass and its hard orientation toward point-and-click. And they're willing to forgo sharing an experience on the big screen for playing alone separately.
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People don't want to crowd around postage stamp sized portions of a single television
Into what "portions" does a fighting game or a co-op adventure like LEGO $movie divide the screen? Besides, it's only "postage stamp sized" if you pair two to four Bluetooth controllers to an Android phone, as each quadrant of a living room TV is bigger than even the iPad Pro.
They want to be comfortable while playing games and they want to play games with more than a few people at once.
But is this comfort worth buying three copies of each game for a household?
Oh and a touchscreen is fine for many game types.
If it were, then critics wouldn't have panned the Turbo Touch 360 controller so hard. How would you control, say, Mega Man series on a touch screen?
Let's design a platformer control method (Score:2)
But is this comfort worth buying three copies of each game for a household?
Why would I do that? My friends are already going to have their own copies
Because a parent is often the source of all these copies for a household.
If it were, then critics wouldn't have panned the Turbo Touch 360 controller so hard. How would you control, say, Mega Man series on a touch screen?
Did the Turbo Touch 360 guys have access to the Mega Man source code so that they could make a control layout that worked well?
Hypothetical: Let's say I get a contract with Capcom, and I've been given the source code for Mega Man 2. I've already got it ported to a modern assembler (ca65), and I've built enough NES compatibility infrastructure in an Android app that I can interpret the 6502 code and MMC1 paging commands and translate NES PPU display lists to Android display commands. It works great with a Bluetooth keyboard. Now all I have to do is fill port $4
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But not my mouse and keyboard.
Fuck mobile games and consoles. Give kids a decent gaming PC, a Steam account and turn 'em loose.
In a year, they'll have figured out how to install a new video card, how to overclock a CPU. They'll learn the importance of power supplies and of cooling and how to calculate clock speeds. They'll learn how to benchmark and what "frames per second" and "FOV" mean. They'll know what a driver is, and why a good one is impor
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If one has access to entertainment in a package that is totally portable rather than one that anchors them to the wall, of course the portable option will be the favored one. Why is this news?
Maybe to some people. Other people are not willing to compromise on the screen size and User Interface. Game consoles generally have two multiaxis sticks and 6 or more buttons. On a portable you have the "click here" button. That severely limits the types of games that can be played. Some have built in motion detection, which allows you to play the whole device like a steering wheel, but that is annoying when you keep moving the display around. Mobile devices also have poor battery life when it comes to ga
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For PCs, how old is acceptable? A 486 can run Warcraft II. I kind of wish that I had kept Pentium or Pentium II with a 3dFX card and Soundblaster 16 to run older DOS-based games.
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Sounds like you've never seen a credit card statement in your life. Do your parents pay your bills?
Yep, you're parents are paying the bills.
Content with only consuming what you're fed (Score:2)
Right now, if I had to choose to go without my home PC (actually macbook, haven't owned a desktop PC in a decade) or without my phone, I wouldn't even have to think about it; keep the phone. For work, for any type of content creation, I want a keyboard, mouse, and full size screen. But for consumption, mobile devices are ideal.
The implicit connotations [gnu.org] of the term "content consumption" make me feel uneasy. I prefer "creating works" and "viewing works created by others". Now with that out of the way:
Having to choose between a PC and a phone, one or the other, discourages people from even attempting to create works. In fact, if someone is unable to create works for long enough, the situation frames his thoughts into a sort of Stockholm syndrome where he wouldn't even conceive of attempting to create works and becomes more willing t
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ScummVM works on Android
ScummVM is an emulator, needing games obtained elsewhere. Does Android support a floppy or CD drive to load supported games from authentic media?
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**Optical drives that are Fat32 compatible and the Android devices USB port must have enough power to feed it.
I have ScummVM installed on my PCs, Macs, Android tablets, phones, and anything else that will accept it. I own all the original games in "box," in CD, 3.5, and 5.25" floppy and have imported the files over the years from various platforms -- I've owned DOS and Mac version. For my Android tablet and phone,