I had an amazingly difficult time getting in on the mantle beta for developers and I somewhat regret throwing myself at it so hard. I'm still excited to see what other developers do with it, especially a big budget like BF4. From my perspective it's perhaps a bit more work than usual but it's just worth it and it certainly makes more logical sense so even if it's more work it goes much faster actually saving time. Though I don't have the specific need for it myself I see the potential and because it is so much better I'd still develop for it anyway if I had the budget for it. For now even though it's an open API to my knowledge nvidia still doesn't like it or allow it.
CES also started and all the news coming out from there is exciting as always. Though sadly when it comes to some of the more important hardware I care about things are fairly run of the mill. I'd love to hear something truly exciting about processors we're not expecting like more cores, more power, more heat, smaller form factor, etc. I'd love to just hear same performance for lower power.
Though we are finally hearing processors with ddr4 controllers and are supposedly being surprisingly stable in comparison to previous generations launches. MSI apparently finally has a good ITX amd mobo which has me excited even though I know I won't be getting it. They're also releasing ITX form factor graphics cards which is nice if you want more graphics than you'd get from an APU.
Apparently Dell might be first to market with a 4k OLED monitor, which is a little sad but at least it's something instead of nothing. Though from my experience dell monitors don't live as long as other brands and considering we're expecting a shorter lifespan on OLED to begin with this has me a bit worried.
hybrid hard drives are doubling in capacity which sounded nice at first until I found out the SSD space is staying at 8gb and they're just doubling regular HDD space so now we have 4tb regular and 8gb nand when the main complaint I'm sure was how small the SSD side was.
there's all kinds of CES news beyond this which I suggest everyone read. My last really exciting thing that comes to mind is some DSP controlled PSU's which I don't know why I never thought of that before, the basic explanation is that DSP is digital signal processing unit which is a digital controller to increase efficiency which leads to the new 80+ titanium above the 80+ platinum for upwards of 95% efficiency.
I'll probably post about these more next week. so what does everyone think about steam OS? anyone annoyed with it moving to UEFI only so quickly?
January 09, 2014
December 19, 2013
2014 the year of 4's
so just a recap on how 2014 is going to be the year of 4's for tech.
DDR4 ram which coincidentally has a minimum stick size of 4gb
4k Resolution
likely AM4 amd platform
Sata4
USB 3.2 aka usb 4.0
the PS4
pcie 4.0 (rumored)
many video games with the number 4 in them excluding the obvious yearly titles from sports
many revision 4.0 softwares and OS'
and there's likely a few more I'm forgetting like openGL/CL 4.0 or something suffice to say that this year we will be seeing many 4's thrown at us and I for one plan on building a sweet 4.0 system.
DDR4 ram which coincidentally has a minimum stick size of 4gb
4k Resolution
likely AM4 amd platform
Sata4
USB 3.2 aka usb 4.0
the PS4
pcie 4.0 (rumored)
many video games with the number 4 in them excluding the obvious yearly titles from sports
many revision 4.0 softwares and OS'
and there's likely a few more I'm forgetting like openGL/CL 4.0 or something suffice to say that this year we will be seeing many 4's thrown at us and I for one plan on building a sweet 4.0 system.
December 15, 2013
Teamwork
One thing that's preached over and over again across nearly all industries and throughout the entirety of your education is the importance of teamwork and people skills. The sad truth is that in order to get ahead in this life. unless you simply are the absolute, unequivocal, undeniable best at what you do, you have to know people. It's always about who you know and who knows you and just a small acquaintance is sometimes all the advantage you need or that determines who gets the job. It may not be fair but that's life.
Unfortunately for me because of the manner in which I'd lived my life up to this point I am unprepared for the sheer level of stupidity I have to deal with on a daily basis. It's hard to get along with people when you can't stand them. It's not that they're stupid or have a different belief or just don't know things, if that were the case I could certainly deal with it. I find myself surrounded though by willfully ignorant people that actively ignore facts as presented to them and substitute baseless notions of what they think should be the best for any random reason without support. This isn't some subjective thing either like methodology of work methods or art it's very clear well defined objective values on things that shouldn't even be argued over. To put the basis of most arguments I have in a form we can all understand I'll use a math formula, don't concern yourself with the value of the variables focus more on the form and format presented.
(me) We should do Q because of A, B, and C instead of what we do now X because of T, M, P, and E and that is in our best interest because of D and we'll be better off for it.
(them) well I think that X or Y is best and it's all the same no matter how you do it so it just doesn't matter and P will be the same either way and it's just like (other thing) ....
then they ramble on without any supporting evidence
to shorten this:
(me) Q>=A+B+C ~ X=F+G+H F+G+H=T+M+P+E=D and our goal is T+M+P+E<D or ~D>D and we define A+B+C<T+M+P+E thus <F+G+H thus Q>=X resulting in ~D>D aka our goal
therefore Q is a superior solution to our goal than X
(them) (X, Y> Q and Q/P=X, Y/P and F=G=H=T=M=P=E=D because ? and (~D=D)*constant) = Z
therefore X = Z <X, Y
so you might understand my frustration when dealing with people that make no sense, don't understand what they're talking about and ignore even simple facts, though that wasn't as present in this example it's present I assure you. they're the kind of people that once they say it they're locked in and will argue that 2 is greater than 3 all day no matter the evidence the whole time saying that 7 is the best anyway and nothing else matters
So the secret to life is probably somewhere along the lines of condescending tolerance of all other people and having excellent interpersonal manipulation skills, because sex will only get you so far.
Unfortunately for me because of the manner in which I'd lived my life up to this point I am unprepared for the sheer level of stupidity I have to deal with on a daily basis. It's hard to get along with people when you can't stand them. It's not that they're stupid or have a different belief or just don't know things, if that were the case I could certainly deal with it. I find myself surrounded though by willfully ignorant people that actively ignore facts as presented to them and substitute baseless notions of what they think should be the best for any random reason without support. This isn't some subjective thing either like methodology of work methods or art it's very clear well defined objective values on things that shouldn't even be argued over. To put the basis of most arguments I have in a form we can all understand I'll use a math formula, don't concern yourself with the value of the variables focus more on the form and format presented.
(me) We should do Q because of A, B, and C instead of what we do now X because of T, M, P, and E and that is in our best interest because of D and we'll be better off for it.
(them) well I think that X or Y is best and it's all the same no matter how you do it so it just doesn't matter and P will be the same either way and it's just like (other thing) ....
then they ramble on without any supporting evidence
to shorten this:
(me) Q>=A+B+C ~ X=F+G+H F+G+H=T+M+P+E=D and our goal is T+M+P+E<D or ~D>D and we define A+B+C<T+M+P+E thus <F+G+H thus Q>=X resulting in ~D>D aka our goal
therefore Q is a superior solution to our goal than X
(them) (X, Y> Q and Q/P=X, Y/P and F=G=H=T=M=P=E=D because ? and (~D=D)*constant) = Z
therefore X = Z <X, Y
so you might understand my frustration when dealing with people that make no sense, don't understand what they're talking about and ignore even simple facts, though that wasn't as present in this example it's present I assure you. they're the kind of people that once they say it they're locked in and will argue that 2 is greater than 3 all day no matter the evidence the whole time saying that 7 is the best anyway and nothing else matters
So the secret to life is probably somewhere along the lines of condescending tolerance of all other people and having excellent interpersonal manipulation skills, because sex will only get you so far.
November 26, 2013
November 21, 2013
Dreamware 2
When I started this dev blog I put up a list of hardware I was working with and kind of what I wanted to see in the future. Now it's time to update this list with hardware I want to work with as a dev, even if some of it doesn't even exist...
First and foremost my monitor is feeling it's age. There are times now when it just gets really dark really fast and stays that way for a while making it a pain to work. Clearly it's dying but my next upgrade doesn't exist yet and so I'm trying to extend every little bit of life I can from what I have till I can get something close to what I want. In terms of a monitor that would be OLED. As opposed to LCD with an LED backlight, OLED is a new method entirely and is actually good enough to replace CRT's as research methods on images and quality. OLED is the highest point in technical superiority at this point and quite honestly can destroy an LCD of any panel type with ease. The theoretical potential refresh rate is 100,000hz aka 100khz as opposed to the theoretical maximum potential of LCD at 400hz (no k) though as we've seen input lag is usually your main problem rather than response time. The contrast and color depth are equally superior, as well as weight, size, thickness, and shock. In addition you can actually have bendable OLED displays to curve and provide new methods of viewing, and will likely give a small bonus to any 3d viewing you might want, even if it's not really a big concern for me yet. While it's true we're making substantial strides in holographics and their feedback methods they're still at least a decade away from being viable gaming methods if not longer. The technical details of this desired monitor are trivial in comparison to the main type however they are still desired so here they are: 32 inches+ in the 16:10 aspect ratio for true 4k resolution of 4096, 160hz+ refresh (shouldn't even be anything below that I would hope...) and realistically even if HDMI does manage to have proper support for 4k the inherent nature of it means I'd still want royalty free display port which was natively capable of handling 4k without revision and locks into place better, as one of the main inputs available.
Next up is the framework for this new system, a motherboard. I've been seeing many good things coming from Asus lately, their ROG series aside their efforts on TUF components, board "armor / shield" and efforts in their UEFI (replacement for BIOS, can initialize multiple system components simultaneously) have made me a fan. However as of yet they are also the only AMD based board I know of to have PCIE3, though that's likely to change in the future. By preference and for good reason I'd like to see an 8+core 5.0ghz cpu AMD based board with DDR4 memory which crucial is planning on launching supposedly as early as next month. While the CPU is already out there to my knowledge it doesn't have any kind of control implementation for DDR4, considering as of yet no processor or mobo does it definitely falls in the fantasy section at the time of writing.
On this mobo I want a thunderbolt add in card for the various accessories I happen to already have that can use thunderbolt among other reasons. It appears sound cards are re-implementing dedicated sound processing again, as well as now adding them to GPU's which makes me happy and certainly desired. At the minimum it alleviates the CPU a little, in some cases as much as 10%. The GPU I'm not very picky on, almost anything in the current R9 series is fine, or potentially the future R10 series (presumably?). This is picked primarily for their implementation of Mantle and dedicated sound processing hardware on GPU, though I understand that actually some of the R9 cards don't have that? While I would still appreciate a little more Ram on card the GCN architecture resolves this to some extent making it less of a concern. I'd most likely add an AMD fire card for workstation use in 3d max and the like, as well as a capture card for obvious uses. I'd also seriously consider a PCIE based SSD like the Asus RaidR express for it's fast initialization time ( a problem with other PCIE SSD's) and it's performance speed comparable to 2 samsung 840 evo's in raid0. Ideally there'd be enough ram to choke a horse, considering we're contemplating this imaginary system as DDR4 the double capacity would likely be as high as 16GB a stick or higher? meaning 64GB in 4 lanes or 128 on an 8 lane board. The perfect setup to make use of this is to load a system image that automatically loads to RAM (in the form of a ramdisk presumably?) and operates exclusively from there without ever needing to write to the drives aside from perhaps updating the image with minor things like updates and session information to some degree. It's just as likely in the process that most programs would be run in a virtualized environment or otherwised sandboxed to preserve that clean install feel, with exceptions to obvious necessities I use on a regular basis.
In terms of storage I'd be looking heavily at SSHD's as a primary large capacity storage given their additional cost is extremely minimal and worth every penny twice over. With perhaps as many as 4 relatively small SSD's in Raid0 for the sake of initial read spead, though to accommodate this speed we'd need either an add in raid card, or a new Sata controller that doesn't cap out at 1.5gb/s so this would be likely Sata4 (8gb/s [lies]) and given the nature of SSD's and their controllers to fully saturate a given sata connection in short order with advanced controllers this would likely be from the current 500mb/s a port/drive to 1gb/s (probably not...) which would hopefully accommodate a full 4gb/s via controller. Cumulatively I could be happy with 8TB of storage which western digital is actually apparently making available already to some extent means it could be inside a single drive, if it were an SSHD though I'd hope they expand the SSD side a bit more from the standard 8gb or 16 in WD case to something more reasonable given the enormous capacity, like 64gb.
I imagine it wouldn't be so difficult to modify a linux kernel to actually perform the OS concept above, and now in consideration take it a step further and give load priority with limitation, which is to say it loads obvious things first, holds off on programs till they're called for before loading them from the drives and have adjusting size with this concept to maximize memory use efficiently.
in terms of peripherals like keyboard and mouse there's a constantly evolving selection of items that are grabbing my attention. The key features I consistently for however are proper details of the mechanical switches used in a keyboard as well as more recently a mix of key types, programmable macros and profiles for them. Similarly on the mouse side I like having a wide range of dpi settings I can quickly change directly from the mouse itself, programmable buttons and profiles on it, and above all the mouse has to have some sense of style and flair in addition to fitting my admittedly large hands. It's also nice to have the option of switching between wired and wireless for both the mouse and keyboard though sadly that is an extremely rare feature in the "under 100$" price range.
The hardware is fairly straight forward, just a nice high end system of the near future, and the OS is actually somewhat believable under those conditions even right now without too much effort. Now we enter the real sci-fi area of implementing ideas like second screen / "glass" tech where I can hook up tablets and use them as secondary displays and methods of input for all my programs with minimal effort which in itself is somewhat do-able already though not to the extent you see on consoles. I'd want to also implement the methods of console input on pc, using a controller in substitute of a mouse and an automatic virtual keyboard for additional input with predictive text and a little style. It's not like a concept for daily regular use, but damn if it's not absolutely noticeable when you're playing a game and have to set it all aside to grab the keyboard and mouse to handle something small. Granted there are other virtual keyboards out there, and XPadder can emulate keyboard and mouse amazingly but we can all agree it pales in comparison to just the basic input methods of the 360 and ps3 let alone the new gen. Which brings me to the next addition of adding voice controls and speech to text. This is also already available and really wouldn't need much work to implement alongside the other concepts presented.
Who knows what the future holds though right? Is there something I missed? What would you change or do differently? leave a comment.
First and foremost my monitor is feeling it's age. There are times now when it just gets really dark really fast and stays that way for a while making it a pain to work. Clearly it's dying but my next upgrade doesn't exist yet and so I'm trying to extend every little bit of life I can from what I have till I can get something close to what I want. In terms of a monitor that would be OLED. As opposed to LCD with an LED backlight, OLED is a new method entirely and is actually good enough to replace CRT's as research methods on images and quality. OLED is the highest point in technical superiority at this point and quite honestly can destroy an LCD of any panel type with ease. The theoretical potential refresh rate is 100,000hz aka 100khz as opposed to the theoretical maximum potential of LCD at 400hz (no k) though as we've seen input lag is usually your main problem rather than response time. The contrast and color depth are equally superior, as well as weight, size, thickness, and shock. In addition you can actually have bendable OLED displays to curve and provide new methods of viewing, and will likely give a small bonus to any 3d viewing you might want, even if it's not really a big concern for me yet. While it's true we're making substantial strides in holographics and their feedback methods they're still at least a decade away from being viable gaming methods if not longer. The technical details of this desired monitor are trivial in comparison to the main type however they are still desired so here they are: 32 inches+ in the 16:10 aspect ratio for true 4k resolution of 4096, 160hz+ refresh (shouldn't even be anything below that I would hope...) and realistically even if HDMI does manage to have proper support for 4k the inherent nature of it means I'd still want royalty free display port which was natively capable of handling 4k without revision and locks into place better, as one of the main inputs available.
Next up is the framework for this new system, a motherboard. I've been seeing many good things coming from Asus lately, their ROG series aside their efforts on TUF components, board "armor / shield" and efforts in their UEFI (replacement for BIOS, can initialize multiple system components simultaneously) have made me a fan. However as of yet they are also the only AMD based board I know of to have PCIE3, though that's likely to change in the future. By preference and for good reason I'd like to see an 8+core 5.0ghz cpu AMD based board with DDR4 memory which crucial is planning on launching supposedly as early as next month. While the CPU is already out there to my knowledge it doesn't have any kind of control implementation for DDR4, considering as of yet no processor or mobo does it definitely falls in the fantasy section at the time of writing.
On this mobo I want a thunderbolt add in card for the various accessories I happen to already have that can use thunderbolt among other reasons. It appears sound cards are re-implementing dedicated sound processing again, as well as now adding them to GPU's which makes me happy and certainly desired. At the minimum it alleviates the CPU a little, in some cases as much as 10%. The GPU I'm not very picky on, almost anything in the current R9 series is fine, or potentially the future R10 series (presumably?). This is picked primarily for their implementation of Mantle and dedicated sound processing hardware on GPU, though I understand that actually some of the R9 cards don't have that? While I would still appreciate a little more Ram on card the GCN architecture resolves this to some extent making it less of a concern. I'd most likely add an AMD fire card for workstation use in 3d max and the like, as well as a capture card for obvious uses. I'd also seriously consider a PCIE based SSD like the Asus RaidR express for it's fast initialization time ( a problem with other PCIE SSD's) and it's performance speed comparable to 2 samsung 840 evo's in raid0. Ideally there'd be enough ram to choke a horse, considering we're contemplating this imaginary system as DDR4 the double capacity would likely be as high as 16GB a stick or higher? meaning 64GB in 4 lanes or 128 on an 8 lane board. The perfect setup to make use of this is to load a system image that automatically loads to RAM (in the form of a ramdisk presumably?) and operates exclusively from there without ever needing to write to the drives aside from perhaps updating the image with minor things like updates and session information to some degree. It's just as likely in the process that most programs would be run in a virtualized environment or otherwised sandboxed to preserve that clean install feel, with exceptions to obvious necessities I use on a regular basis.
In terms of storage I'd be looking heavily at SSHD's as a primary large capacity storage given their additional cost is extremely minimal and worth every penny twice over. With perhaps as many as 4 relatively small SSD's in Raid0 for the sake of initial read spead, though to accommodate this speed we'd need either an add in raid card, or a new Sata controller that doesn't cap out at 1.5gb/s so this would be likely Sata4 (8gb/s [lies]) and given the nature of SSD's and their controllers to fully saturate a given sata connection in short order with advanced controllers this would likely be from the current 500mb/s a port/drive to 1gb/s (probably not...) which would hopefully accommodate a full 4gb/s via controller. Cumulatively I could be happy with 8TB of storage which western digital is actually apparently making available already to some extent means it could be inside a single drive, if it were an SSHD though I'd hope they expand the SSD side a bit more from the standard 8gb or 16 in WD case to something more reasonable given the enormous capacity, like 64gb.
I imagine it wouldn't be so difficult to modify a linux kernel to actually perform the OS concept above, and now in consideration take it a step further and give load priority with limitation, which is to say it loads obvious things first, holds off on programs till they're called for before loading them from the drives and have adjusting size with this concept to maximize memory use efficiently.
in terms of peripherals like keyboard and mouse there's a constantly evolving selection of items that are grabbing my attention. The key features I consistently for however are proper details of the mechanical switches used in a keyboard as well as more recently a mix of key types, programmable macros and profiles for them. Similarly on the mouse side I like having a wide range of dpi settings I can quickly change directly from the mouse itself, programmable buttons and profiles on it, and above all the mouse has to have some sense of style and flair in addition to fitting my admittedly large hands. It's also nice to have the option of switching between wired and wireless for both the mouse and keyboard though sadly that is an extremely rare feature in the "under 100$" price range.
The hardware is fairly straight forward, just a nice high end system of the near future, and the OS is actually somewhat believable under those conditions even right now without too much effort. Now we enter the real sci-fi area of implementing ideas like second screen / "glass" tech where I can hook up tablets and use them as secondary displays and methods of input for all my programs with minimal effort which in itself is somewhat do-able already though not to the extent you see on consoles. I'd want to also implement the methods of console input on pc, using a controller in substitute of a mouse and an automatic virtual keyboard for additional input with predictive text and a little style. It's not like a concept for daily regular use, but damn if it's not absolutely noticeable when you're playing a game and have to set it all aside to grab the keyboard and mouse to handle something small. Granted there are other virtual keyboards out there, and XPadder can emulate keyboard and mouse amazingly but we can all agree it pales in comparison to just the basic input methods of the 360 and ps3 let alone the new gen. Which brings me to the next addition of adding voice controls and speech to text. This is also already available and really wouldn't need much work to implement alongside the other concepts presented.
Who knows what the future holds though right? Is there something I missed? What would you change or do differently? leave a comment.
November 17, 2013
I Live Again
Well the vacation went well. It nearly killed me being without internet and there's so much to catch up on. Sadly pop culture is as dreadful as ever and politics is as sad as ever with so much indecision and people caring about the most ridiculous things. As much faith in humanity was restored in my travels I must say that America is doing a damn fine job at destroying it all over again. Now that I'm back though I have so many ideas I've been writing down and joining together.
Perhaps my most impressive feat is that I've officially found a way to tie all stories from all of my other games together into a single coherent timeline occupying the same universe. I'm now working on a full comprehensive story to tie everything together and as awesome as I like to think it is at least it will make sense, at most someone's mind might just melt and then explode at the awesome move.
It also seems the personal points system is catching on, I've found many more people just saying out loud plus one (insert value eg. respect, cool, etc) for various things and people. Gaming news is pretty hot right now for obvious reasons, though sadly the launches both look pretty bad right now.
On the upswing AMD finally has new graphics cards, crucial is about to have the first to market DDR4 RAM before there's a single motherboard to support it or processor with controller, which we expect sometime next month. 4k is being pushed hard and the tech is looking better all the time. G-sync looks fabulous and intel is making thunderbolt available as an add in card, Mantle API is making promises that I hope it can deliver on so badly, companies are once again starting to push hardware driven sound processing for games something we lost after EAX kinda and will free up CPU power a bit. OLED is also making a big push and prices are falling fast, from like 80k for a 50" last year to 40k for a 90" this year, and supposedly some of the first AMOLED monitors making their way to consumers. To clarify LED is a backlight, OLED an actual replacement for LCD, and from what I understand they're using IGZO as a panel type for both? Samsung has a new tech for depositing the phosphors which also helps cut costs which excites me a little. It's only a short distance away from a glorious stage I almost have a nerdgasm for, which is 160+hz refresh, sub-milisecond response, 4k resolution, in the 32+" range under the $1k mark. My understanding of OLED leads me to believe refresh rates should be infinitely superior to LCD which we barely get 144hz on the high end and has a theoretical max capacity of 400hz, where as OLED by theory of it's .01ms response time could have as high as 100,000hz refresh from a mechanical and mathematical standpoint.
so yeah, in terms of tech I'm geeking out a bit, but games are also looking good and I'm happy a lot of console games are making their way to pc reasonably fast this time. Oh so many other things to take care of though, so I'll have to fill in other details next time, just letting everyone know I'm alive
Perhaps my most impressive feat is that I've officially found a way to tie all stories from all of my other games together into a single coherent timeline occupying the same universe. I'm now working on a full comprehensive story to tie everything together and as awesome as I like to think it is at least it will make sense, at most someone's mind might just melt and then explode at the awesome move.
It also seems the personal points system is catching on, I've found many more people just saying out loud plus one (insert value eg. respect, cool, etc) for various things and people. Gaming news is pretty hot right now for obvious reasons, though sadly the launches both look pretty bad right now.
On the upswing AMD finally has new graphics cards, crucial is about to have the first to market DDR4 RAM before there's a single motherboard to support it or processor with controller, which we expect sometime next month. 4k is being pushed hard and the tech is looking better all the time. G-sync looks fabulous and intel is making thunderbolt available as an add in card, Mantle API is making promises that I hope it can deliver on so badly, companies are once again starting to push hardware driven sound processing for games something we lost after EAX kinda and will free up CPU power a bit. OLED is also making a big push and prices are falling fast, from like 80k for a 50" last year to 40k for a 90" this year, and supposedly some of the first AMOLED monitors making their way to consumers. To clarify LED is a backlight, OLED an actual replacement for LCD, and from what I understand they're using IGZO as a panel type for both? Samsung has a new tech for depositing the phosphors which also helps cut costs which excites me a little. It's only a short distance away from a glorious stage I almost have a nerdgasm for, which is 160+hz refresh, sub-milisecond response, 4k resolution, in the 32+" range under the $1k mark. My understanding of OLED leads me to believe refresh rates should be infinitely superior to LCD which we barely get 144hz on the high end and has a theoretical max capacity of 400hz, where as OLED by theory of it's .01ms response time could have as high as 100,000hz refresh from a mechanical and mathematical standpoint.
so yeah, in terms of tech I'm geeking out a bit, but games are also looking good and I'm happy a lot of console games are making their way to pc reasonably fast this time. Oh so many other things to take care of though, so I'll have to fill in other details next time, just letting everyone know I'm alive
August 11, 2013
Still Alive + Brand Loyalties discussion
I didn't completely drop off the map just yet I'm still around. I've been doing some interesting things lately and I'll be happy to share them with you later on. However I will be out of reach for the next month or two while I'm on a bit of a vacation that sadly after tomorrow will most likely not include much if any internet access. That having been said I felt like branching this blog out a bit and this time including some only barely related discussion of brand loyalty.
The conversation I had prompting this was the obvious ps4 vs X1 that I'm still shocked is even a legitimate discussion at this point but I digress. It's my fault for listening in on a friends conversation and then interjecting my 2 cents instead of just keeping my mouth shut but once I was in it was like a freefall face plant. (you're all in and it's going to be ugly)
Being that I don't have any given console loyalties something I learned back when my great debate was n64 vs ps1, I shared my thoughts on both consoles and how I've been loving my pc gaming the last couple years. Immediately in my own head I realized how I had sounded when I was saying what I was saying and even called myself a douche. Which right around the same time was followed up with my friends calling me "douchebaggins" which somehow has been a thing among us lately spawning from something to do with the lord of the rings I can't quite remember. Things got a little heated but there were many valid points expressed on brand loyalty to a positive light rather than pointing out the pointlessness of brand loyalty to the corporate machine. This being aside from the fact that probably one of my greater desires is unfortunately being a part of this system regardless of if that makes me a sell out.
The discussion can be boiled town to some of the following bits. Starting with that not all brand loyalty is bad and that in some scenarios it's practically a necessity. Unlike games where long term investments tend to pay off to some degree in the consumerist world we're in buying the same products and their iterations exclusively from specific companies tend not to have any benefits. In the computer world your brand loyalty between intel or AMD really is just that as there really aren't any alternatives readily available on massive scales. I am speaking about consumer based desktops to clarify not the server world or mobile devices. In that case it may be picking the lesser of two evils or just picking what you know works best for you. In my case I support a specific ideology and methodology. AMD focuses on hyperthreading, additional stream processes, better performance for a given price range and much more. In the end I tend to pick AMD products because they're right for what I need hence why I advocate them. However if this were not the case and their products and details were similar and the choice was relatively arbitrary I might make the same decision based on a distinct hatred of intel primarily for their practices and policies.
The real problem with brand loyalties to me is more apparent in areas like cell phones where people insist on sticking with a given provider for service or a phone manufacturer for some unknown reason. For me it just doesn't make sense and while I love a lot of the smart phones out there sadly I don't have one for myself because I just can't bring myself to sign into an absurd 2 year contract mandatory with basically every phone and service provider out there hence why I just have a very basic phone. Yet consistently I hear these arguments over the new galaxy or the next iphone and I wonder while both phones are great why neither party would ever consider even looking at anything other than what they already have. I can only assume it's some psychological need for validation of their decisions.
In gaming brand loyalty is a bit harder to discern as it's nearly impossible to understand why someone specifically supports bioware as some form of supposed superiority over ubisoft which while a competitor in the world of gaming is not exactly a direct competition that I know of in any way. In something a little more clear cut though there's the regular debate of Battlefield VS Call Of Duty and thus your brand loyalty can at least be understood in some coherent fashion as opposed to some conspiracy theory sounding explanation of why mass effect is in "direct competition" with assassins creed on the same level as BF3 vs MW3. Still being the gamer that I am I've played both and actually own both games on multiple platforms though in full disclosure I only paid for each once. I wouldn't simply ignore the next battlefield because of my preference for modern warfare or vice versa. Similarly I'm not ignoring the next call of duty because I loved battlefield I'm ignoring it because I'm fed up with a definitive lack of innovation and this was already a strain to begin with as within the battlefield vs CoD there's a subset of loyalties to infinity ward vs treyarch as to which call of duty line loyalties lie with.
When it comes to consoles I heard a lot of the same arguments between the ps3 and the 360 and I might argue that in that scenario it was more valid than now as there were valid points made on how xbox was a newcomer and the original xbox didn't have a very wide library where as the ps1 and 2 both had many great experiences available with established franchises. The substantial price difference also meant that your decision as to which to get was significant and it was between sticking with what you knew and were familiar with or going with the unknown. A lot of people were blindly picking which to go with based on past experience as if it were some how indicative of competitive performance rather than the expected future performance within the brand. That is to say that somehow the fun you had with halo was effecting your judgement on how the ps3 would do, or how FF, SotC, ico, MGS, etc suggested how the 360 would do which hopefully when I clarify it like that you can understand how absurd and utterly ridiculous it sounded. Yet literally you could hear people saying "oh it's going to flop because of (this game/ or franchise)" and even worse some of the statements about how windows domination of the pc market was indicative how their inevitable domination of the gaming market without even breaking stride to consider that at the time sony was the windows of gaming. Clearly they didn't realize that MS wasn't quite the all dominating force they made it out to be. Now if G.E. ever gets in the game business... that conglomerate is literally a world dominator they have their hands in everything and brand loyalty in that case is pointless in the face of total annihilation.
Moving back to PC for a second consider brand loyalty as it pertains to graphics cards. There are plenty of people out there who swear by a given brand which may be known for a given quality of some sort but when it comes down to it it's all the same card no matter who's name is on it and you're not doing yourself a favor blindly sticking to one brand if you can get the exact same thing elsewhere for better cost.
As you can see I'm split on brand loyalty. Generally it's a stupid idea, when it's necessary you should consider carefully, if it's for a fashion statement you deserve any punishment you receive for it, and honestly if you really wanted to support a given brand buying their product is the wrong route anyway and you're a fool if you believe that it is. If you really want to contribute support them more directly. Become an investor for example, and as a stock holder you can actually influence decisions and policies so that you can help make it the brand you want it to be. As to putting my money where my mouth is... I am an AMD stock holder and yes I'm keenly aware of their losses, equally I'm well aware of all their new products such as being the first to market with a 5.0ghz processor once again handing intel their collective asses, and then some. I would also point out that I'm aware of why some of their numbers are low given their focus on the mid range rather than high end hence why it took them so long to come out with an official 7990, not to mention the fact that they sold off some assets in order to try and minimize their deficit, and their entry into the memory market, and just so much more. I see where the company is headed and as a shareholder I vote on these kinds of things and quite simply put at this point it's not "brand loyalty" anymore. If there's something you're really into like you blindly must have the next iphone then I highly suggest you become a shareholder in apple stock so you can actually tell apple what you want in that next iphone and make it the best iphone ever, otherwise you can't just arbitrarily state it's superior by default because it also has plenty of drawbacks and I would have no problem making a solid argument against it or in favor of one of it's competitors.
The conversation I had prompting this was the obvious ps4 vs X1 that I'm still shocked is even a legitimate discussion at this point but I digress. It's my fault for listening in on a friends conversation and then interjecting my 2 cents instead of just keeping my mouth shut but once I was in it was like a freefall face plant. (you're all in and it's going to be ugly)
Being that I don't have any given console loyalties something I learned back when my great debate was n64 vs ps1, I shared my thoughts on both consoles and how I've been loving my pc gaming the last couple years. Immediately in my own head I realized how I had sounded when I was saying what I was saying and even called myself a douche. Which right around the same time was followed up with my friends calling me "douchebaggins" which somehow has been a thing among us lately spawning from something to do with the lord of the rings I can't quite remember. Things got a little heated but there were many valid points expressed on brand loyalty to a positive light rather than pointing out the pointlessness of brand loyalty to the corporate machine. This being aside from the fact that probably one of my greater desires is unfortunately being a part of this system regardless of if that makes me a sell out.
The discussion can be boiled town to some of the following bits. Starting with that not all brand loyalty is bad and that in some scenarios it's practically a necessity. Unlike games where long term investments tend to pay off to some degree in the consumerist world we're in buying the same products and their iterations exclusively from specific companies tend not to have any benefits. In the computer world your brand loyalty between intel or AMD really is just that as there really aren't any alternatives readily available on massive scales. I am speaking about consumer based desktops to clarify not the server world or mobile devices. In that case it may be picking the lesser of two evils or just picking what you know works best for you. In my case I support a specific ideology and methodology. AMD focuses on hyperthreading, additional stream processes, better performance for a given price range and much more. In the end I tend to pick AMD products because they're right for what I need hence why I advocate them. However if this were not the case and their products and details were similar and the choice was relatively arbitrary I might make the same decision based on a distinct hatred of intel primarily for their practices and policies.
The real problem with brand loyalties to me is more apparent in areas like cell phones where people insist on sticking with a given provider for service or a phone manufacturer for some unknown reason. For me it just doesn't make sense and while I love a lot of the smart phones out there sadly I don't have one for myself because I just can't bring myself to sign into an absurd 2 year contract mandatory with basically every phone and service provider out there hence why I just have a very basic phone. Yet consistently I hear these arguments over the new galaxy or the next iphone and I wonder while both phones are great why neither party would ever consider even looking at anything other than what they already have. I can only assume it's some psychological need for validation of their decisions.
In gaming brand loyalty is a bit harder to discern as it's nearly impossible to understand why someone specifically supports bioware as some form of supposed superiority over ubisoft which while a competitor in the world of gaming is not exactly a direct competition that I know of in any way. In something a little more clear cut though there's the regular debate of Battlefield VS Call Of Duty and thus your brand loyalty can at least be understood in some coherent fashion as opposed to some conspiracy theory sounding explanation of why mass effect is in "direct competition" with assassins creed on the same level as BF3 vs MW3. Still being the gamer that I am I've played both and actually own both games on multiple platforms though in full disclosure I only paid for each once. I wouldn't simply ignore the next battlefield because of my preference for modern warfare or vice versa. Similarly I'm not ignoring the next call of duty because I loved battlefield I'm ignoring it because I'm fed up with a definitive lack of innovation and this was already a strain to begin with as within the battlefield vs CoD there's a subset of loyalties to infinity ward vs treyarch as to which call of duty line loyalties lie with.
When it comes to consoles I heard a lot of the same arguments between the ps3 and the 360 and I might argue that in that scenario it was more valid than now as there were valid points made on how xbox was a newcomer and the original xbox didn't have a very wide library where as the ps1 and 2 both had many great experiences available with established franchises. The substantial price difference also meant that your decision as to which to get was significant and it was between sticking with what you knew and were familiar with or going with the unknown. A lot of people were blindly picking which to go with based on past experience as if it were some how indicative of competitive performance rather than the expected future performance within the brand. That is to say that somehow the fun you had with halo was effecting your judgement on how the ps3 would do, or how FF, SotC, ico, MGS, etc suggested how the 360 would do which hopefully when I clarify it like that you can understand how absurd and utterly ridiculous it sounded. Yet literally you could hear people saying "oh it's going to flop because of (this game/ or franchise)" and even worse some of the statements about how windows domination of the pc market was indicative how their inevitable domination of the gaming market without even breaking stride to consider that at the time sony was the windows of gaming. Clearly they didn't realize that MS wasn't quite the all dominating force they made it out to be. Now if G.E. ever gets in the game business... that conglomerate is literally a world dominator they have their hands in everything and brand loyalty in that case is pointless in the face of total annihilation.
Moving back to PC for a second consider brand loyalty as it pertains to graphics cards. There are plenty of people out there who swear by a given brand which may be known for a given quality of some sort but when it comes down to it it's all the same card no matter who's name is on it and you're not doing yourself a favor blindly sticking to one brand if you can get the exact same thing elsewhere for better cost.
As you can see I'm split on brand loyalty. Generally it's a stupid idea, when it's necessary you should consider carefully, if it's for a fashion statement you deserve any punishment you receive for it, and honestly if you really wanted to support a given brand buying their product is the wrong route anyway and you're a fool if you believe that it is. If you really want to contribute support them more directly. Become an investor for example, and as a stock holder you can actually influence decisions and policies so that you can help make it the brand you want it to be. As to putting my money where my mouth is... I am an AMD stock holder and yes I'm keenly aware of their losses, equally I'm well aware of all their new products such as being the first to market with a 5.0ghz processor once again handing intel their collective asses, and then some. I would also point out that I'm aware of why some of their numbers are low given their focus on the mid range rather than high end hence why it took them so long to come out with an official 7990, not to mention the fact that they sold off some assets in order to try and minimize their deficit, and their entry into the memory market, and just so much more. I see where the company is headed and as a shareholder I vote on these kinds of things and quite simply put at this point it's not "brand loyalty" anymore. If there's something you're really into like you blindly must have the next iphone then I highly suggest you become a shareholder in apple stock so you can actually tell apple what you want in that next iphone and make it the best iphone ever, otherwise you can't just arbitrarily state it's superior by default because it also has plenty of drawbacks and I would have no problem making a solid argument against it or in favor of one of it's competitors.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)