2007 – timewarp continuum

Welcome back to part two of this year in review, something i kind of regret not doing last year, it’s
The good, the bad, the 1337 and the ugly.

The good

- new Stargate movies and a whole new Stargate series is coming.
- Duke Nukem is back on.
- PS3, lot’s of good stuff where added this year.
- finally something is being done about the environment, gg Gore.
- bluray, better than dvd thats for sure, even on a SDTV.
- PSP, i finally got one a year ago, it’s a gift that keeps on giving, it’s great for porn too.
- new computers, i am getting one soon.
- NIKON DSLR cameras, ever since my parents got a D80 my interest in photography has been ignited, anyway i might be getting my hands on a cheap D200 soon, this means a new gallery section here, yay.
- Youtube atheism, Dawkings, Hitchens and so on, you really made an impact on status quo. Read more »

2007 – timewarp ensue

Heh.. sorry about not being around for some time, but i have been busy, i have plenty to talk about so expect more withing the next few days.
Anyway, it’s time for another episode of my year in review/fortune telling extravaganza, and we begin with the yearly review.

Games
Console war – yea baby, it’s on and hotter than ever, pretty much as i predicted really with a few things that where a little bit off.
1. while less PC games where based on ps2 titles, they weren’t based on new 360 or ps3 games on an massive scale, simply put there where simply fewer games out there.
2. no sequel to f.e.a.r, expansion packs, and ut2007 is now UT3
3. way to many delays on the PS3 side, i see it as a missed opportunity their holiday sales on game consoles would be the double if MGS4, GTA4, haze where out, and considering that the ps3 sold the same amount of consoles if not more than the 360, it’s really a missed opportunity. Read more »

2007 and you

A yes part two of the omnipotently magnificent futuristic ramblings of by brain for 2007.

Games
2007 will bring the real console wars to light, as xbox360 start showing of what it really can do, so will the PS3 at the end of the year, this will also mark the last year where PC games are being based (read:raped) of PS2 games (Rockstar, I’m looking at you), but we will also see a lot of great new games for the PC, like UT2007(duh), maybe crysis and a few more, like perhaps a sequel to F.E.A.R.

Wii on the other hand will start out great, but it will fade during the year, it’s just one of those fads everyone wants but no one keeps, Nintendos only hope is to get lucky with a few releases, that or make Zelda games like there was no tomorrow.

DX10 games will also make it out on the market, but my guess is that most of the DX10 class games will in fact not be made with DX10 but with openGL since Microsoft made such a fatal mistake by making DX10 vista only, and not everyone will get vista in the beginning.

Computer Technology
I don’t think the GF9 will make it in 2007, but we will for sure see what kind of new things it will have, i am guessing even more memory, pipelines and last but not least the first blend shader capable card.
But in 2007 we will have to do with the NVGF8900 coming this summer.

But one thing that will come in 2007 is not only one but two whole openGL versions, one of them possibly being openGL 3.0 with all the new cool stuff, i am looking forward to this.

Quad cores are also on the march, let’s just see if all those new games support them, i think they will.

Consumer electronics
SED tv screens are said to make it to the market this year, from the claims i have heard they are better than anything else on the market, if it is true then it may push all the other technologies to the side.
I still think that some version of the OLED screens will win the flatscreen war in the end because of some of it’s other features (besides the price, energy efficiency, slimness, durability, rollupability, expandability, and so on).

Ipods- will be the only i products left in a while since apple has decided to macify everything, iPhone say hello to macPhone, iPhoto meet macPhoto and so on, though it will still contain the same GUI gloss coated crap.
Now the macworld expo is just around the corner and that guy in a black turtle neck is gonna talk for something like 2 hours, then add the relatively dry year 2006 was (besides the Intel mac and clippy), so anything is up for grabs what he will reveal, may be a new mac/macos, the phone is almost a shoe in and a fist full of ipods is a given.

Politics
Bush will have a hard year, with the recent defeat in the senate and house he will have to either retract some of the things he did during the last few months or just veto everything for the next two years, I’m guessing the democrats will want the habeas corpus act back, and the recent last ditch tax cut’s and the other things he did, there is about a million of them so naturally i am not going to bring them all up.

And BTW so will Reinfeldt, he has exactly 1 to 1,5 years to prove his politics works, if not he might be forced out of office, and we could have a reelection as soon as 2008 or 2009.
the thing is that he hasn’t gotten of to a great start, and even though he only have to lean back and flow the currents of new jobs he still comes up a bit short, it could be the whole ass humping thingy he has going with the Swedish public.

Entertainment
Nope sorry no entertainment for you, it will most likely be worse than 2006, there is simply nothing to look forward to, i am waiting to be surprised, but i don’t think so.

Things to out for this year
GDC – with the new SM4 hardware out there it might be nice to see what can be done with it.

id software – Quakecon or earlier was the promise carmack gave in his last keynote, the promise was to show off their latest most spectacular game ever.

Whatever comes instead of E3, it must be good, if it’s not i want the old E3 back, complete with booth babes and all.

CES, Cbit, TGS and so on – with the cancellation of E3 these shows are going to be more significant, and with the added confusion of which show is THE show things could get wild.

April 1 on blizzard.com, what will they think of next.
Besides it’s about time a new game emerged, i have heard some rumbling from there, seen their job postings (i have even been interviewed for one) and therefore extrapolated that soon would be a good time for a new game to be revealed.

2008 – sorry all 2007 fans but i reckon 2008 will be a wee bit better, why you ask, simple, no more PS2 to worry about, and we will see who will take over the helm of starship America (www.worfforpresident.org).

And finally the cute x-mas pics of Evan i promised.

For some reason everything around him was always damp

And if you ever wondered what anti red eye flash photography does to a kid.

He also got the most and biggest presents, but hey, it’s his first Christmas.

now if you thought taking cute pictures of small children in bad light is a nobrainer, think again, their eyes light up bright red like nothing else making them look just that extra bit evil.

2006 in retrospect

It’s time again for my second annual two part new years special
in this part we take a look on how well my predictions for 2006 came out.

Games
Good/bad gaming year – yes this happened
Low demand for xbox360 – well sort of, this would have been abolutley true if the PS3 wasn’t delayed as it was, tank god that the Wii picked up the slack.
PS3 release date – i thought maybe September, it became November in the end (may in Europe).
Bad PC year – yes yes and yes, one of the best PC releases this year was battlefield 2142 and it sucked.

Computer Technology
NV GF8800GTX – was released on time, and with 640MB(gts) and 768MB(gtx) versions.
It does have 128 unified shader pipes but i think that with the new geoshader this is needed.
Dual core payoff – yes stuff really starts to take off in the multicore area with both dual, quad and octacore configs.

Consumer electronics
The dvd war – is not resolved, as i said it wouldn’t be.
New ipods – strange only a new ipod nano and the little clippy thingy.
Imac – no new imacs here either.
DMC – nope no revolution here either, but you can buy them and Sony is planning a new special PS3 version to cover that area.

Politics
Sharon – Nope not dead, not yet anyway, though he won’t be making any comebacks at all, ever.
Bush – is in the hot seat, with the loss in the recent election, can you say “lame duck”.
Sweden – a total surprise, the right wing campaigned long and hard on the “we will screw you long and hard in the ass for the next four years” and people liked it, for about two weeks that is.

Entertainment
Movies – the only good one was the third x-men movie, 2007 better pick up the slack.
RIAA – yes as always they stepped in bhanta poodoo.
TCPA – has managed to elude the radar, but so long it’s not rearing it’s ugly face somewhere obvious.

Stupidity
The moderate party – did not end up with foot in mouth, though their ally Folkpartiet (liberal party) got caught with their hand in the cookie jar, or in this case a restricted server with sensitive material on it.
Iran – yes this has happened to some extent, their holocaust convention was especially fun.
Violent video game laws – no new ones in America, but in Germany instead, and it is a really stupid one at that, it outlaws making, selling, buying and playing them, silly germans.

Other misc thing that happened in 2006
The Wii, nr 1 in the best console name category, it took everybody by surprise, even me, now if only they could produce some killer apps to go with it since as of now only Rayman Raving Rabbids is worth anything.
They did get a great start, but i think it will be short lived now when the PS3 production starts revving up and it’s released in Europe.

In the next part i will make my predictions for 2007, and also some cutesy xmas pictures of my nephew Evan (i just need some time to photoshop them).

Call me Chronos

Last time i promised predictions of 2006, here they are conveniently subdivided into multiple sections.

Games
2006 will be both good and bad for gaming, the good thing is related to the X360 and the PS3 consoles, unfortunately so is the bad thing, sure the general graphical quality will increase, but the developers have just only started to familiarize themselves with the consoles and if we follow the pattern set by the PS2 and it’s predecessor the quality will increase, both graphical and gameplay wise.
The Xbox 360 will not do as well as the PS3 for tree reasons
1. legacy and backwards compatibility,
2. more raw power, and more uses than the 360
3. the 360 sales are only being kept alive artificially by Microsoft, they are not making a single penny out of it and they probably never will

It is said that the PS3 is going to be released sometime this spring, but i don’t think so, i don’t think Sony want to make the same mistake as they have previously, so when the PS3 is released, there will be plenty to go around, secondly they don’t want to repeat Microsoft’s mistake of only having a handful of semi good titles at release, so plenty of release titles as well.
But doing all this takes time, so spring does not seem likely, a game developer said recently September, this does however seem unlikely, it will be delayed, but i just can’t say when.

On the PC side however, things are not looking bright, and i think it’s because developers are developing for 4-5 consoles as well, but in return, 2007 and 2008 does look better as developers starts discontinuing the PS2/xbox line (the PS2 has in my mind always been bad for PC games).

Duke nukem forever will not be released, amazon.co.uk will claim that the release date will be in about two months

Computer Technology
Nvidia will release the GF8800GTX card just in time for Christmas, and it will sport more than 32 pixel pipelines(probably 48 or 64) and 512MB GDDR4 (maybe only GDDR3, but it will support GDDR4 for later models) on the base model, in early 2007 we might just see a 1GB, it will also have a few new FSAA modes, support shader model 4 and work well with dual(or even quad) screen 4 core SLI mode.
No revolutionary new features though, it will just be a upgraded GF7800.

Dual core CPU’s will finally begin to pay off as coders start to grind away at them, but that is as far as it goes, i just can’t see any new features, i have not even heard of dramatically raised cpu speeds,
Is Intel going the same way as AMD is (lower speed, greater efficiency), but it doesn’t make sense to me, i was hoping for at least 4 Ghz, but no.

Consumer electronics
The Blueray/HD-DVD war won’t see a resolution, both parties are stubborn enough to not cave in, and the involvement of Microsoft just made the whole thing uglier, so by the end of the year we will be able to by movies in 4 or more different dvd like formats.

The apple made from white plastic will unleash a new iPOD nano, it will be slightly smaller and will be able to play tv-shows, there will also be a handful new other regular iPODs in ever increasing HD sizes, I’m guessing up to 100-150GB and with a new and improved oled display, it will be made from white plastic and brushed aluminum.

The new Intel iMacs have already been announced, the only problem is that they run at such low speeds, and in gaming there is(currently) no replacement for speed, I’m guessing that there will be another iMac announcement soon that delivers a computer that can actually play games, and not shitty old ones at that.

2006 will be a year of the digital media centers, everyone will need one because of all the varying media formats coming this year, they have already started advertising about them, and it will be the Christmas present of the year, that and a flat tv.

Speaking of witch, larger oled displays will start to come out on the market, both as tv sets and as computer displays, don’t get one just yet though, they will be expensive and not that great.
But the future potential for both greatness and cheapness are looking good, get one in 2008.

Politics
Sharon is dead, maybe not physically but definitely politically, this we all know, but his replacement will probably not be as big as him(both physically and politically), now this will probably be a positive thing in that area of the world.
Secondly there is an upcoming election in Israel and Sharon’s new party Kadima might create an interesting situation where power is split between more parties thus resulting in more compromises, that is good for the peace process.

Bush and the rest of the republicans will feel the heat this year, and i wouldn’t be surprised if there will be rumors of impeachment and other legal actions, hope not, i don’t want an overtly evil/greedy man with the power to push the big red kill all button (unless it’s me ofc).
A recall election would be a better choice, in that case we will get rid of both.

Moving on to Sweden, a big election is coming in September, and the outcome is as unsure as ever, the two big party blocks are in a dead heat and not one or two big newcomers this year but four, and all of them has at one time polled at around 20%, those numbers are not realistic but the interesting thing is that all four are not based on a traditional left/right ideology, or so they say, only one of them are truly not a left or right wing party, that party is called the pirateparty, while i don’t think any one of them will ever get above 4%, they will definitively cause permanent marks on Swedish politics.

Besides the above i can’t see anything else besides Iran to cause any special concerns, but then again, shit happens.

Entertainment
coming movies to watch out for could be Pink panter, Ice age 2, the da vinci code, Dead or Alive and so on, 2006 is not gonna be a spectacular movie year, in this respect 2007 might be a better one.

RIAA will continue putting foot in mouth, now this is a spectacular trick since they already have their head up their ass, nonetheless they will continue suing people, but they will now face increasing resistance, in fact i suspect that more lawsuits will be thrown out than they where expecting.

Although the RIAA don’t like this, i think we will see an increasing amount of artists that are changing their method of making money, this is good, better and free music is better for everyone.

RIAA and MPAA will continue working with Microsoft on TCPA, but it will now be called something else, nevertheless it will fail when it finally surfaces, but not this year, it is slated for the VISTA release, bit i don’t think it will be fully implemented until SP1.
But TCPA won’t be included in Linux and the design of TCPA requires every OS and hardware to support it, so the joke is on these companies, hahaha.

Stupidity
2006 has great potentials for stupidity, Bush will do something stupid, multiple times.

The moderate party in Sweden will end up with a foot firmly lodged in mouth as always at election time, it will take about a year for them to dislodge it, as always.

The president of Iran will spew out more stupidity than Baghdad bob ever could (at least bob was the funny one), the thing is that in the end not even Muslim hardliners would want to stand next to him, so maybe he will get a Darwin award.

American states will pass a number of violent video-game laws, coincidently an equal number of said laws will be put to death by higher institutions, coincidently #2 these games will also sell better now that they are rated higher, coincidently #3 kids will still play them at an even higher frequency now that they are “forbidden”.

Another DRM system will hit the world with the force of an nuclear bomb, fortunately the rest of the world will hit back with the force of a death star.

Things to look out for this year
My sisters birthday, witch is conveniently located right after April fools day, the day when blizzard will announce the real fifth alliance race (as opposed to the Pandaren (or worgen) who they will announce as the fifth race the day before).

GDC, id love to go, but i am content with the neat little pdf files nvidia, ati and 3dlabs produce, they keep me happy for the rest of the year.

E3, prepare for the console onslaught, Microsoft and Sony will compete in who is gonna out do the other one, i really want to go this year, there will be lots of phat loot at this years E3, and lots and lots of booth babes, maybe even booth babes as loot.

Sigraph, it’s always nice with sigraph, they show the softer and cooler side of computer games and graphics, not as soft as the booth babes or cool as the loot at E3 though.

The PS3 launch, the fact that they are not even trying to do PS3 ads now only says that they are going to launch it with a bang, it will be noticed, even by the dead.

Well that’s it, this darn thing took me a week or two to write.
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