I'm glad you brought up perception times. Icons with noticeable load times are about as batty as the first Guitar Hero shipping without calibration tools. HUHWHA?
Wouldn't you know it, perception limits came up at work today. Specifically, we were discussing instruction design, arranging lecture / activities / discussion / etc., and the timing necessary to make sure everyone feels like it's moving along at a nice pace. Serendipity!
lol yeah at work i do a lot of performance spec'ing so i have to do a lot of judgement calls about screens that access internet data & the expected load time for that, vs actions that may time out, vs complex processing with huge amounts of concurrent users… So to see Sony drop the ball on the [i]textbook example[/i] of perception times just injures my professional pride.
Going back to the previous post about "games as software" – People want a smooth experience. They don't necessarily want tons of power if they can't [i]feel the effects of that power[/i]. I think the sales numbers for the PS3 really reflect that.
And on that note – I had a brief digression in this post about the hardware design too, since I think Sony's decisions were completely idiotic (asymmetrical processors, shipping then removing PS2 compatability, wtf? Using BluRay is as clear an example of 'ship the org chart' as you can find) but that led into some pretty lengthy caveats (For example, shipping with BluRay was completely the right decision for Sony as a company, even though it wasn't the best decision for the PS3 as a gaming platform). It got too wordy, especially once I felt like I should defend the Wii's architecture decisions since it made them a ton of money (something like $50 profit on every console?), maintained back-compat, and sold extremely well despite lacking graphical power.
Written by:zach
I'm glad you brought up perception times. Icons with noticeable load times are about as batty as the first Guitar Hero shipping without calibration tools. HUHWHA?
Wouldn't you know it, perception limits came up at work today. Specifically, we were discussing instruction design, arranging lecture / activities / discussion / etc., and the timing necessary to make sure everyone feels like it's moving along at a nice pace. Serendipity!
lol yeah at work i do a lot of performance spec'ing so i have to do a lot of judgement calls about screens that access internet data & the expected load time for that, vs actions that may time out, vs complex processing with huge amounts of concurrent users… So to see Sony drop the ball on the [i]textbook example[/i] of perception times just injures my professional pride.
Going back to the previous post about "games as software" – People want a smooth experience. They don't necessarily want tons of power if they can't [i]feel the effects of that power[/i]. I think the sales numbers for the PS3 really reflect that.
And on that note – I had a brief digression in this post about the hardware design too, since I think Sony's decisions were completely idiotic (asymmetrical processors, shipping then removing PS2 compatability, wtf? Using BluRay is as clear an example of 'ship the org chart' as you can find) but that led into some pretty lengthy caveats (For example, shipping with BluRay was completely the right decision for Sony as a company, even though it wasn't the best decision for the PS3 as a gaming platform). It got too wordy, especially once I felt like I should defend the Wii's architecture decisions since it made them a ton of money (something like $50 profit on every console?), maintained back-compat, and sold extremely well despite lacking graphical power.