A Miserable Podcast of Secrets

[Mzo]

LOL. When bahn asks that question about customizing the UI and I'm like, "What kind of question is that?" it's because he said "on a scale from 1 to 10." The question was fine, it was the phrasing that was weird.

ALSO: Nick is dumb about checking the manual in Ninja Gaiden: it's part of the LiveArea screen, not the main game menu. You want to check it mid-game, press the PS button and tab the manual icon in the LiveArea. Done.

[FirstBlood]

He should have phrased it "on a scale from iPhone to Android" because that's exactly what he meant.

Also people giving you shit about the air bubbles on screen protectors. That's like, the whole thing with screen protectors, where they suck and get dusty bubbles on them and are worthless.

[dave is ok]

Screen protectors are for gays

[Some Stupid Japanese Name]

It was hilarious because ive gone through the same shit. First it isnt lined up right, so you peel it off. Well now you got a piece of dust right in the middle. Ha ha! You tried to get the dust off and now theres a finger print! Into the garbage it goes!
I went through three of those fucking expensive ass screen protectors before i got one on perfectly. Fuck dust forever.

[Mzo]

And what is all this UMD failed talk? Did GBA carts fail? Or GC mini-discs? They held game data and you played the game on their respective system.

[dave is ok]

All Nintendo cartridges and discs failed until the Wii

[FirstBlood]

I mean they did try to push the UMD as a media for like movies and stuff, but they were PSP-specific so I don't really think it's the UMD's fault that stuff failed.

Someone went on to say something like "Sony media always fails, they should just stop". Which is just hilarious, because I'm pretty sure you went on to talk about blu-ray. And I know that a lot of their formats were considered commercial failures but I think Betamax and Minidiscs both has a lot of success and were considered the standard for TV and recording for a while, right?

[Nick]

Betamax was used by professionals because of the higher image quality, and maybe the smaller size, but it never became the mainstream standard. VHS trashed it. Similarly, MiniDiscs and Memory Sticks were glorified niche products in their categories.

I assume that Sony isn't run by a bunch of hipsters that just want to make cool gear for their friends and themselves. They want to define the standards, in the way Sony was a juggernaut in televisions, video game consoles, and portable cassette players.

Speaking of audio cassettes, Sony tried to replace those with digital audio tapes, another failed format. And the UMD was a failure insofar as it catching on as a movie format. But that was the least of the problems I outlined.

I like Sony, and I like the Blu-ray format, but Sony did have a lot of disappointments over the years on particularly ambitious projects.

[Hero]

I dunno Nick - I don't think a company gets to define a standard by making it wildly expensive and then forcing their prior iteration to go the way of the dodo after 5 years. Which is what Sony does.

I know they struck out well with BluRay, but didn't they effectively strong arm HD DVD out of the market by throwing mad money at studios? Not to mention that between the two, neither was actually the "people's format" of affordable, quality-enough product (back when they fought it out)?

I tend to think that if you want something popularized it has to have the path of least resistance. This is why 360 is more popular with devs (easier to work on), the Wii was popular with non-zealot-crazy-over-involved gamers (because it was easy to understand and use and good looking/fun "enough"), and Blu Ray is finally popular (enough studio backers and cheap enough for the added clarity). Not because of anything Sony intends one way or another. Or, if they intend to be the mainstream form for media, they go about it the wrong fucking way.

[dave is ok]

Plus, Betamax was big in Japan. The only country that matters.