After reporting on a rumor that Mother 3 would be coming out for the Gamecube, Games Are Fun now reports that the former Earthbound 64 will be unveiled at E3! While it is unconfirmed, if GAF says it's so then I'll believe them.
Quote:Mother 3 at E3
We reported on saturday that Nintendo has plans to release a Mother 1 + 2 compilation on the Game Boy Advance, plus they are reworking Mother 3 for the GameCube. At the time, the report was unconfirmed but we had a suspicion it was true.
Today, we can inform you, through means unspeakable, that Mother 3, otherwise previously known as Earthbound 64 in North America, will be unveiled at this year's Electronics Entertainment Expo. E3 will be held at the Los Angeles Convention Center from May 14th to the 16th. GAF will be there to report from the floor, so you can expect the first coverage! However, we don't know if Mother 3 will be shown in video form or playable. It will be there, though. You can count on it.
Which relient K cover should I get? I only have one more week to decide.
I'm leaning toward the green one because the mountains, forest, and falling rocks seem more appropriate, but you gotta dig the pink limo. Pink seems to be a theme for this cd as well. One of their songs is about wearing a pink tux to the prom in the 80's (despite the fact that none of these guys were born before 1980). Also, anyone who buys the cd is entered in a chance to win a pink limo. I don't know what you would do with a pink limo, but it would be cool.
Don't make a wrong turn! Buy "Two Lefts Don't Make a Right... But Three Do" on March 11!
NVDA Morgan Stanley Conference
by: atyguy (36/M/Montreal) 03/03/03 08:25 pm
Msg: 55287 of 55375
Just listened to the webcast. This is a different Jen-Hsun than I have heard on a couple of other occasions.
Focus of the discussion was on non-core business, but he touched on all segments.
When questioned on what he expected from his new FX GPU family, he hesitated and said that he foresees a good year for the "GPU market" with no real reference to the expected success of the FX family specifically. Said that they are going to market 0.15u mainstream versions of FX, as opposed to the "competitor" which is going with 0.15u in the high end and 0.13u in the mainstream. Says it will provide NVDA with more capacity to meet high-volume mainstream demands and calls it a "clever decision" that should benefit NVDA. Admitted his disappointement with 0.13u delays and problems.
With regard to XBox, said the arbitration process has ultimately helped relationship with MSFT, but when asked about XBox2 he was very ambivalent and said that it represented a significant "technology risk" to any company that undertook the challenge. Uncharacteristically lavished praise on Sony's upcoming PS3 and its cell processor, insinuating that it would almost be miraculous to outdo it.
The only issue on which he sounded relatively confident was nForce2.
Lots of hesitation and uncertainty in his demeanor; he cleared his throat more often than Orton ever has, and sounded far less cocky and sure of himself than I've ever heard him.
Overall, my impressions:
He is far from confident that the GFFX family will be as successful as previous generations.
He is tipping the industry off on the very real possibility that NVDA will not be involved with XBox2.
Just my interpretation, but I recommend listening for yourselves.
On a further note, the Inquirer also had some interesting reportings...
Quote:Nvidia bullish about NV30, in both .15 and .13 microns
Jen-Hsun forecasts millions of parts and a $99 GeForce FX
By Mike Magee: Dienstag 04 März 2003, 10:08
JEN-HSUN HUANG, the charismatic CEO of Nvidia, told a meeting of analysts yesterday about his firm's future plans.
Nvidia had $1 billion in the bank at the end of last year, and $200,000 in cash flow money.
He said four new businesses were generating over $100 million in revenues for his company.
At the end of Q4, Nvidia grew its business and upped its gross margin by five points to over 30%.
Nvidia worked off its inventory successfully during Q4, he said. It shipped the GeForce FX and the QuadroFX during that quarter.
Graphics represents a billion out of its approximately $2 billion revenue. In the last four years Nvidia shipped over 200 million processors. Three out of four PCs has Nvidia technology in it, he said.
Moving to .13 micron was very hard and delayed its move to the marketplace by a couple of months, but now yields are better.
GeForce FX and DX9 will ship in large quantities this year. "Once every four years or so you'll see [the technology] move in a very significant way."
The last big revolution was Quake II, he said.
He claimed GeForce FX is the most powerful graphics processor in the market today.
It's made using copper interconnect and .13 micron by TSMC. "It's the only graphics device that has reached a 1GHz data rate," he said.
The workstation market is growing because the industry is in the process of transforming it. It's worth $50 million, and it's important strategically for Nvidia because of its place in content and digital creation.
The Quadro FX architecture has for the first time made it possible for hardware to play a role in the very high end content market, using programmable shaders, and for films and for cut scenes in video games, or in TV ads.
Mobile graphics, the GeForce Go! brand is a $150 million business for NVDA, giving it 25 per cent of the market. "We've every opportunity to make it continue to grow," he said.
Chipsets are an important part of Nvidia's business, worth another $150 million. It only has two per cent market share but it has much room to go. The Nforce 2 is "catching the imagination" of the marketplace.
He said he tried not to be angry with its Xbox business because it gives Nvidia hundreds of millions of dollars. This business is the first entry Nvidia has made into consumer electronics.
He's incredibly excited about what Microsoft is doing with Xbox, he said. There was no question that Halo was way above anything on the Playstation 2, he said.
Nvidia will take GeForce from top to bottom of the market. It has .15 micron versions of GeForce FX in production.
Did we know this already? I don't think so.
It will be used in "low end" GeForce FX and will ship "millions and millions" of chips.
2003 will be a good year for GPUs, he said. AGP 8X is the first major platform change from Intel – and will create an upsurge for graphics processors.
Most high end GPUs are expensive, but it's not until a GeForce FX card comes down to $99 that it really makes a big splash in the industry.
Nvidia has many different kinds of relationships with Microsoft aside from the Xbox, and include a serious involvement with Longhorn.
The arbitration process [with Microsoft] is a legal process and Nvidia learnt a lot about the process and understood much through this relationship.
He seemed to suggest that Nvidia may not necessarily go with the Xbox 2 architecture, because of the enormous engineering challenges.
Without the Xbox the world would not have learned about programmable shaders, he said.
The Playstation 3 will be a miracle machine but it will take an extraordinary effort for a company to create it. By the second half of this year, Nvidia's foundry will be able to produce 12-inch silicon dinner plates, so achieving economies of scale. µ
Reading the above makes you wonder and raises a few question:
a.) will Nvidia design the GPU of Xbox 2?
b.) thoughts on PS3 by Nvidia
If the above article is any indication, obviously Nvidia is very impressed by what Sony has been working on. Is this the reason why they may not join with Microsoft anymore? Also, if they don't, what will this mean for Xbox 2? ATI seems to be in talks with Nintendo, so who will Microsoft be left with? Time is running out. And lastly, with the decrease of the PC-gaming industry, Microsoft aswell as Nvidia are damned to loose marketshare - wwould it be clever of Nvidia to stay within that market? Particularly given the huge advancements that ATi have been making lately?
This appeared in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, my local newspaper. And it's probably the most sensible thing I've heard on the Iraq war in ages.
Quote:In the summer of 1999 warplanes pounded Serbia into submission. The U.S. flew the vast majority of the sorties in an operation that marked Europe's most sustained aerial assault since the era of the Stuka. The mission succeeded. Slobodan Milosevic fell.
Intervention had two goals. (1) defending Kosovo against Serbian aggression, and (2) changing the regime in Belgrade. Years of diplomacy had failed to restrain the malevolent appetites of Slobo and his wife, "The Red Witch". They responded only to the unassailable argument of Allied military might.
President Bill Clinton did not seek formal congressional approval before commiting the U.S. to war. Neither he nor Jacques Chirac nor Gerhard Schroeder sought permission from the UN Security Council. They acted without an official UN mandate.
Serbia never directly attacked any of the countries that staged the relentless offensive. The U.S. did not drop bombs to defend itself. The campaign failed several of the tests associated with the doctrine of the so-called "just war". Demonstrators did not take to the streets to say that war never accomplishes anything, that malignant violence cannot be met with countervailing violence, that the United States has no business pursuing regime change.
Slobo is a nasty piece of work.
Saddam is worse.
Truer words have never been spoken. The liberal anti-war movement is hypocritical and selective. War is only evil when a Republican president pursues it, I suppose.
Now more than ever I find no credibility with anti-war people.
Quote:FIC is now producing a huge range of advanced video cards based on ATI technology. New additions to the range include the A98 and A98P based on the ATI Radeon 9800 and 9800 Pro graphics engines respectively. The A98 and A98P both feature 400MHz RAMDAC, 8 pipeline architecture, 256 bit data width, 512Kb of serial flash ROM, AGP 8X/4X/2X compatibility, TV-out, support for simultaneous dual displays and DirectX 9.0/OpenGL support. In addition, the A98 will support 128MB of DDR memory and a core/memory clock speed of 325/310MHz. The A98P will support up to 256MB of DDR memory and has a core/memory clock speed of 400/460MHz.
The new A97 and A97P graphics cards are based on the ATI Radeon 9700 and 9700Pro graphics engines respectively. The awesome A97P features a 325/310MHz core memory clock and 256bit memory interface. The A97and A97P are AGP 4X and 8X compatible and advanced 3D features include SMARTHEADER 2.0, SMOOTHVISION 2.0, HYPER Z III, TRUEFORM 2.0 AND VIDEOSHADER. Both the A97 and A97P also support DirectX9.0.
Its long... but worth it. Read this, anyone here who thinks IGN's framerate obsession is sane...
Here is a really good part : Page 6.
Quote:If there's been one developer who's taken a lot of flack over their console ports to the GameCube, it's been High Voltage Software. Charged with bringing Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance over from the PS2 and Hunter: The Reckoning over from the Xbox, it was a difficult task considering the change in hardware capabilities and the popularity that both releases enjoyed on their native platforms. Ultimately, critics weren't very receptive of their work. To be sure, according to statistics at Gamerankings.com, the GameCube version of Dark Alliance scored, across a variety of websites, only five percentage points fewer than the average maintained by the PS2 edition, while the Hunter port received marks about 10 percent lower than its sibling - not precisely a tragedy for High Voltage considering how tremendously well the previous incarnations fared. However, nearly every review attributed extreme frame rate problems to each of the ports, even if the extent of these alleged problems didn't seem to overly swing the results of their final ratings.
This had profound effects on the readership of these sites and the gaming community as a whole. Having had relatively good luck with supposedly troublesome ports in the past, I overcame my initial reservations and placed an order for Dark Alliance with an online retailer. Shortly after that, I mentioned my purchase on an Internet forum. Within minutes, another member had posted, expressing his shock that I had bought it, given the dire reports of the frame rate. Because of the fairly tight knit nature of the gaming community and its natural proliferation on the Internet, not all gamers need to even read reviews; the peer pressure that critics help to cultivate is often far more wide-reaching than the words of the reviews themselves.
The Great FPS Conspiracy image As the word "subjectivity" has become nearly a curse word in our society - especially amongst males, the chief demographic of the gaming community - objectivity has become polluted to the point where it's often unrecognizable. Many gamers claim to not read reviews for that same reason; they view them as subjective, and therefore, irrelevant. It's precisely because of this phenomenon that readers took more away from the scathing comments on Dark Alliance's frame rate than the largely positive ratings listed at the end of reviews; a poor frame rate, often listed as a range of two numbers, is seen as objective, while the final ranking is the result of the subjective whims of the reviewer. This is a fairly misapplied sense of both logic and vocabulary, however. After all, it seems unlikely that a human observer could accurately gauge that Dark Alliance slows down to an average of perhaps 10 frames per second during intense scenes with any degree of certainty, as they have no way of proving such an exact assertion. On the other hand, if one set 100 fans of action oriented role-playing games down with the GameCube version of Dark Alliance, it seems very likely that at least 80 percent of them would enjoy it, if polled. Hence, many readers actually mistook the most subjective portion of the review, the part mentioning frame rate, as being the more objective criticism.
To attempt some sort of definitive answer, it's necessary to approach the developer. Josh VanVeld, assistant producer of Dark Alliance for the GameCube, in correspondence with AVault, stated that there's indeed no frame rate problem in the title, and that it averages about 55-60 frames per second under most conditions, dropping to about 45 in extreme circumstances. He went on to say:
"The perception of a poor frame rate in BG:DA was almost entirely based on our in-game camera, which the player can rotate freely. The camera does not rotate in a completely smooth fashion, which apparently led a number of reviewers to bash the game's frame rate. In the case of BG:DA, players will not normally spend a great deal of time rotating the camera, so most people won't notice this issue as a problem. In fact, this was not something that even came up as a major issue during our testing phase, so we were really caught off guard by some of the negative criticism we received. It would have been relatively easy to fix this glitch, but it honestly wasn't something that we noticed until it was too late.
"To hear some of the reviewers' opinions, you would think that the game is almost unplayable, but that's simply not the case. All in all, I think we did a great job of porting a graphics-intensive game from the PS2 to the GameCube. To put things in perspective, one reviewer who complained about our frame rate praised us for having improved geometry and texture quality over the PS2 version of the game. This is amusing because we used the exact same geometry as the PS2 version and most of our textures are about half the size of their PS2 counterparts due to storage limitations on the GameCube mini DVD.
"Most reviewers understand that a game that runs at 'a rock-solid 60 frames per second' will look very smooth, so they tend to make references to frame rates in their articles. What readers probably don't know is that there is simply no way for a reviewer to independently determine a console game's frame rate, so these reports are necessarily subjective."
And continued on page 7.
Quote:While I have no way to verify VanVeld's claims concerning the frame rate of Dark Alliance, there seems to be no reason to call them into question. That the camera was involved should have been quickly observed by most reviewers, easily verifiable by two quick experiments: swinging one's weapon while rotating the camera doesn't result in a choppy attack animation, even if the view does lurch a bit, and remaining motionless after triggering a blue shockwave - unleashed after saving the game - will result in a smooth animation, unlike what appears to be a rougher version, should one move during that period. The death animations of particularly large creatures tend to seem a bit slow, too, though whether they were created that way or are the result of having to be loaded into memory, I can't say, but they might give the appearance of a frame rate problem as well.
All of this can and should be held against the GameCube port of Dark Alliance. What shouldn't occur, however, is the overstating of these problems compared to those of other games, which certainly happened in this case. Sometimes, both critics and players take evidence of slowdown in stride as an unfortunate but tolerable quirk that doesn't impugn the desirability of the product. Not all releases are treated equally, however, and being a top-flight title can sometimes serve as a double-edged sword, sometimes shielding them from undue criticism or exacerbating it - while a port from another platform is often the equivalent of wearing a crown of thorns. When asked about the commercial acceptance of Dark Alliance, VanVeld contributed the following:
"I can only speculate in terms of public perception and its effects. Given that low framerate performance was a comment made in a few reviews, it must have had a detrimental impact on our sales. It seems that the real impact would be determined by how much gamers allow their buying decisions to be determined by reviews. I think that quite a lot of gamers do read reviews, and do allow those reviews to influence their game buying decisions. In this case, that is extremely disheartening because we got zinged in reviews for something that is absolutely not true, and that most likely caused a number of gamers to not even look at a game that they would have otherwise thoroughly enjoyed.
That's interesting... I didn't know that. All I knew before this is that to my eyes BG: DA seems to run just fine and I have no idea what "slow" framerate all the reviews refer to... this seems to justify that. I do think that the insanely long save times are do clearly show the port was sloppy, but the framerate is fine...
Read the whole article... its 7 pages, but worth it. Very good.
This is from near the end...
Quote: Even though picking up both titles for the small sum of $30 brought no small amount of immediate gratification to this bargain bin shopper, in the long run, I fear that hatchet jobs involving attributions of frame rate can only hurt console gamers. Those who own Nintendo hardware exclusively should be especially wary, given that our community has passed up a great number of quality third-party releases due to such reviews, giving publishers little incentive to contribute more. As gamers begin to increasingly think of themselves as savvy when it comes to technology, the rate at which myths are spreading is actually accelerating, due to the egotism that comes with familiarity. Because of this, developers are put in the position of having to conform to these expectations of "60 frames per second," which doesn't necessarily result in smooth animation or graphics, rather than focusing their efforts on what really matters.
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