Author: oddEvan

My two cents on the Nintendo Revolution / Xbox 360 / PlayStation 3 debate, posted at Engadget:

I’m not a gamer. At least not hard-core. When I sit down for 30-45 minutes at a time I expect to be entertained. I expect to have FUN! Right now I’m having fun playing Astro Boy for the GBA. A 2-D system. No polygons, no advanced cell processing bullcrap, just fun.

That’s why I’m buying a Revolution. I’m sick and tired of wading through fake ROM sites and pr0n to play Star Fox 64, too cheap and lazy to find the game and a used N64 at the store. Nintendo’s offering me a system with (presumably) an iTunes-like interface for buying old games, downloading them to my console, and being able to play them. Between that and my PS One (yes, ONE), I should be set for a good long while.

Xbox 360? Wake me when someone hacks it so I can play my QuickTime videos or use my Mac. Oh, and when they get a game I can be excited about besides Halo #. Sorry, guys, but I’m an Apple fanboy, and if Microsoft is going to sell the system based on it being a multimedia hub, it’s gotta work with my Mac in order to sell it to me.

PS3? Maybe so. If the Revolution wasn’t backwards compatable, then I might simply because I’ve got games for it. But now that they’ve got DDR on the GameCube (never mind that it has Mario in it), I’m not as inclined.

Then, of course, there’s price. Nintendo seems eager to undercut the other two consoles, probably by not being as “powerful” as the others. And at the power we’re talking about, the differences between chips (35x, 3x, 150000x more powerful) won’t be apparent until the end of the cycle. By then they’ll be talking about the next generation. And even the least powerful console will still get geeeeeorgous games (God of War, anyone?). Nintendo could squeeze basic polygons out of the SNES (Star Fox), I’m sure they could do a lot with the Revolution.

Oh… this is about rumored specs? Um… well, Nintendo is like Apple, so don’t believe anything until Steve Jobs– I mean Miyamoto-San officially announce something. Um… yeah.

In this /. story Apple is reported to have officially switched to Intel processors, citing more innovation, better power use, and the fact that they’ve been planning it for the past five years. Mac OS X already runs, they’ve got a real-time emulation layer to transparently run current Mac programs, and most other programs can be rebuilt in two hours.

So you mean after years and years of my touting how Intel chips suxxors, now I’ve got to follow Apple onto them? groan I hope this works out. I also hope that they’re not going to sell OS X apart from Macs… or maybe that’s their plan? What better way to invade the Windows territory than to invade their own hardware? Offer the Mac experience at a very cheap price…?

No, that’s not Apple’s style. The Mac experience is driven in part by the fact that hardware and software Just Work™. If Apple has to start supporting all manner of hardware that’s in the x86 world, that would cause problems. Of course, they could only support ATI/NVidia cards, Intel processors, and a certain kind of RAM… Meh, who knows. Now let’s see if I can get Tiger to run on that old HP POC I’ve got upstairs that won’t even run Red Hat…

Okay, if you’re into technology, you really should check out Kevin Rose’s new downloadable show Systm. This first episode is about building a warspying device, basically a box with a screen and a receiver for wireless cameras (like the X10 camera that shows up in pop-up ads the world over). It’s a pretty cool show, especially for being free.

Another reason I’m saying this is that Kevin recently quit his day job at some television channel to do this. Given the direction that network is headed (the $igns are everywhere), I’m kinda glad he’s jumping ship now, although Attack of the Show won’t be nearly the same without him. Good luck, Kevin. And I want to interview you for bsod!