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Evening Reading
by Jeff Mattas, Jan 28, 2011 5:00pm PSTNow that the specs for the upcoming crop of next-gen handheld gaming devices from Nintendo and Sony have been revealed, there's a lot to be potentially excited about. I must confess, even having never been much for portable gaming myself, the tech is very exciting.
Bells and whistles aside, the one thing that could potentially sour my enthusiasm is cost. Pricing is still unknown for Sony's Next Generation Portable (NGP), though it'll likely be more expensive than Nintendo's 3DS, which is expected to retail for $250. That gives me pause, because as cool as the technology seems, I'm not sure I'm ready to pay roughly the same amount for portable gaming (hardware and software) than I do to play on the PC, Xbox 360, or PS3. In NGP's case, if it's just a matter of bringing PC and console-quality experiences to smaller platform, I expect I'd still gravitate to play the version I can experience on my TV, where I can get 10x the screen real-estate.
In other words, I'm cautiously optimistic, with a dash of wallet-panic.
I posted this same question about seven years ago, interesting how tastes evolve.
My answer now would probably be Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, though that might be a waste of a choice. Not sure.
Earlier thread, for anyone interested: http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?id=6721988
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 140 replies.
FWIW, if GEB is feeling like a slog then I highly recommend Hofstadter's "Metamagical Themas" (book of essays, some of which touch on the same topics but in a more approachable manner, also talks about game theory, logic, morality, just great reads) and "I Am A Strange Loop" which discusses the central theme of GEB more precisely and forthrightly, and takes you step-by-step through Godel's Incompleteness Theorem. I was agog at the genius of Godel after reading it -- there are 2 or 3 leaps of genius he took in the process of undermining the notion of a perfect mathematics that left me in awe. The book doesn't touch on all the issues that GEB tries to encompass but it's a good bit easier to handle.
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