Author Topic: The last gaming site you'll ever need!  (Read 7392 times)

Offline idolminds

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The last gaming site you'll ever need!
« on: Tuesday, March 13, 2007, 04:29:29 PM »
Wikia creates 'open-source magazines', and this one is about gaming.

Its the gaming news site where all the articles and content are created by the users! Theres nothing wrong with this plan at all!

...

Its like the Gamefaqs forums meets IGN. Fanboy heaven.

Offline angrykeebler

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Re: The last gaming site you'll ever need!
« Reply #1 on: Tuesday, March 13, 2007, 05:12:57 PM »
omg we need to fanboy up any article on The Phantom
Suck it, Pugnate.

Offline idolminds

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Re: The last gaming site you'll ever need!
« Reply #2 on: Tuesday, March 13, 2007, 05:47:03 PM »
Brilliant.

Offline iPPi

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Re: The last gaming site you'll ever need!
« Reply #3 on: Tuesday, March 13, 2007, 06:23:17 PM »
Hahahah awesome.

Offline scottws

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Re: The last gaming site you'll ever need!
« Reply #4 on: Tuesday, March 13, 2007, 06:31:00 PM »
I forgot about the Phantom, so I checked out its Wikipedia entry.  It turns out that the console was canned (shocker), but they had a "Lapboard" that was nominated for E3's Best-of-Show in 2004.  Alienware even supposedly ordered the device for it's Media Center PCs.

The Lapboard was set to be released at retail "no later than October 2006."  Gamespot even had an article about it.

According to the Wikipedia entry, it was delayed then until November 2006.  I did a Froogle search on "Phantom Lapboard" and found absolutely nothing.  Haha.

Offline MysterD

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Re: The last gaming site you'll ever need!
« Reply #5 on: Tuesday, March 13, 2007, 08:03:57 PM »
The last gaming site you'll ever need!
I figured by the title, the link would be to this place.

Offline PyroMenace

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Re: The last gaming site you'll ever need!
« Reply #6 on: Tuesday, March 13, 2007, 08:06:11 PM »
Actually D, I think Idol has found your life calling.

Offline Jedi

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Re: The last gaming site you'll ever need!
« Reply #7 on: Tuesday, March 13, 2007, 08:53:06 PM »
Actually D, I think Idol has found your life calling.

Haha yeah we might never see you again  ???

Offline gpw11

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Re: The last gaming site you'll ever need!
« Reply #8 on: Tuesday, March 13, 2007, 09:29:28 PM »
I forgot about the Phantom, so I checked out its Wikipedia entry.  It turns out that the console was canned (shocker), but they had a "Lapboard" that was nominated for E3's Best-of-Show in 2004.  Alienware even supposedly ordered the device for it's Media Center PCs.

The Lapboard was set to be released at retail "no later than October 2006."  Gamespot even had an article about it.

According to the Wikipedia entry, it was delayed then until November 2006.  I did a Froogle search on "Phantom Lapboard" and found absolutely nothing.  Haha.

I'd actually be pretty suprised if it didn't come out at some point. There was an article a few months ago about how a new set of investors were sinking money into the company after critics praised early previews of the gaming service for pcs and the lapboard.  You never know, but I think theres a good chance it's just being delayed quite a bit rather then vaporware. 

Either way, the lapboard is pretty cool, but nowhere near as cool as the Optimus keyboard.  That thing is going to fucking rock.  It's also going to kill your bank account, but that aside, it's going to fucking rock.

Offline PyroMenace

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Re: The last gaming site you'll ever need!
« Reply #9 on: Tuesday, March 13, 2007, 11:07:41 PM »
Either way, the lapboard is pretty cool, but nowhere near as cool as the Optimus keyboard.  That thing is going to fucking rock.  It's also going to kill your bank account, but that aside, it's going to fucking rock.

*Looks up info on Optimus keyboard.*

Thats got to be the most completely amazing keyboard ever. Any word on the price range? 1000 bucks?


Offline gpw11

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Re: The last gaming site you'll ever need!
« Reply #10 on: Tuesday, March 13, 2007, 11:29:27 PM »
I believe it's going to be something like $1200.   Actually, that's all kind of up in the air at the moment.  It was originally called the Optimus 113, a full color, fully customizable OLED keyboard.  Now I think they scaled back their first model, which is now called the Optimus 103 (I don't know if they cut back on ten keys) which I believe is black and white LED (although still fully customizable).  I don't know if that means it's going to be priced lower of it that's what they had to do to hit the $1200 mark.

The cool thing is that the thing is recognized as a usb mass storage device, so once you program it and customize all the keys (and I imagine if it pans out there'l be a key set made by someone for pretty much every popular game and program out there) it's on the keyboard instead of the PC...so you can just plug it into another pc if you need to and go from there. 

There's a lot of backlash over the black and white announcement (you know how tech blogs and hardware idiots hype themselves up over something conceptual) but that doesn't change the fact that it'll still be fully functional and a really awesome idea....if you can afford it. 

In the meantime I believe the Optimus Mini3 is available for purchase right now (3 big ass color oled buttons which can be used to display widgets, play video, or do a variety of other things) and the Upravlator should be out in the near future (kind of the same concept, but with more buttons so it'll be more functional for applications like photoshop and whatever else).

It's a great idea and a cool technology, but as of right now it's just too expensive.  I imagine we won't see it really at the affordable mainstream consumer level for like 4-5 years.

Offline Pugnate

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Re: The last gaming site you'll ever need!
« Reply #11 on: Wednesday, March 14, 2007, 02:03:13 AM »
It is the most retarded keyboard I have ever seen. What a scam.

Offline PyroMenace

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Re: The last gaming site you'll ever need!
« Reply #12 on: Wednesday, March 14, 2007, 02:04:18 AM »
Damn trolls, ban him.

Offline Pugnate

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Re: The last gaming site you'll ever need!
« Reply #13 on: Wednesday, March 14, 2007, 05:19:50 AM »
Seriously, it looks like a scam to me.

Offline Quemaqua

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Re: The last gaming site you'll ever need!
« Reply #14 on: Wednesday, March 14, 2007, 06:32:34 AM »
I don't know what you're smoking, it looks awesome.  Now, don't get me wrong, I think it's *almost* entirely a novelty, but it's a damn cool novelty, and anybody with that keyboard is going to have a setup that looks that much cooler because of it.

天才的な閃きと平均以下のテクニックやな。 課長有野

Offline Pugnate

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Re: The last gaming site you'll ever need!
« Reply #15 on: Wednesday, March 14, 2007, 08:06:55 AM »
I heard about this a year ago and found it pretty cool until I found out it wasn't going to cost the initial estimate of $200, but $1000. Are OLED customizable keys really worth all those pre orders? How durable will this thing be? With so many keys I am sure the chances of one of them faulting are pretty high.

You guys heard of the hotselling Das Keyboard II?

Why does it cost $90?

Offline sirean_syan

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Re: The last gaming site you'll ever need!
« Reply #16 on: Wednesday, March 14, 2007, 11:21:19 AM »
Why does it cost $90?

Quote
By using gold plated key switches. . .

There you go.

Offline iPPi

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Re: The last gaming site you'll ever need!
« Reply #17 on: Wednesday, March 14, 2007, 11:29:48 AM »
Yea I believe the optimus keyboard is going to be $1200.

While it is pretty cool, I don't know about you, but I don't look at the keyboard very often, and as a result, having an OLED screen on the keys ends up being pretty useless since you don't look at your keyboard anyway.

Offline idolminds

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Re: The last gaming site you'll ever need!
« Reply #18 on: Wednesday, March 14, 2007, 11:48:11 AM »
Cool keyboard, but I have trouble paying more for the keyboard than for my entire system.

Offline Ghandi

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Re: The last gaming site you'll ever need!
« Reply #19 on: Wednesday, March 14, 2007, 12:24:13 PM »
While it is pretty cool, I don't know about you, but I don't look at the keyboard very often, and as a result, having an OLED screen on the keys ends up being pretty useless since you don't look at your keyboard anyway.

Good point. The Quake config looked nice as hell, but is it really necessary? If you need to look at your keyboard to see how to move then you don't need a damn 1200 keyboard to begin with. You need lessons.

Offline Pugnate

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Re: The last gaming site you'll ever need!
« Reply #20 on: Wednesday, March 14, 2007, 01:17:13 PM »
Cool keyboard, but I have trouble paying more for the keyboard than for my entire system.

Offline gpw11

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Re: The last gaming site you'll ever need!
« Reply #21 on: Wednesday, March 14, 2007, 04:58:51 PM »
Good point. The Quake config looked nice as hell, but is it really necessary? If you need to look at your keyboard to see how to move then you don't need a damn 1200 keyboard to begin with. You need lessons.

They have bad examples on the site.  It's not so much about showing which keys do what as a standard in programs, or about looking cool  (well, for many people), it's more about the fact that it's 100% customizable.  Want to learn Dvorak?  Click a button and you have a Dvorak keyboard.  Done practicing and have to type out an essay?  Back to Qwerty.  It's an essay in another language?  Switch to whatever keyboard is standard for that language.  Loading up Photoshop and can't remember the 200+ hotkeys?  You can look down or even better you can make your own based on what you use the most.  You can bind macros in any program to any key and have a visual que to help your remember what it is.  Sure, for something like Quake it may be useless, but for something more complicated it could come in handy.  I don't see how you could think the technology isn't cool.  Sure, the price is a huge issue, but it's a great idea.

Offline scottws

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Re: The last gaming site you'll ever need!
« Reply #22 on: Wednesday, March 14, 2007, 05:10:25 PM »
That thing costs my than my entire brand new computer (minus monitor).  No thanks.  I'll stick to my $4 Lite On keyboard.

Offline idolminds

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Re: The last gaming site you'll ever need!
« Reply #23 on: Wednesday, March 14, 2007, 05:18:55 PM »
I agree with gpw. The Quake image was meh, but I liked the Photoshop one. Also, Quake is relatively simple with few keys to bind. How about a Nethack setting so you know what every key does? Or some other complex game with 100 binds.

Of just the pure coolness of using the keyboard with WoW where the key shows the spell icon its tied to? Oh god, I'm drooling a little...

Offline idolminds

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Re: The last gaming site you'll ever need!
« Reply #24 on: Wednesday, March 14, 2007, 11:28:25 PM »
Speak of the devil...

Quote
We have some good news and some bad news Optimus fanboys, which do you want first? The bad news? Ok, here goes: the Optimus isn't being shown at CeBIT after all. Yeah, we know, we just caught a huge whiff of rather depressing vapor, but what can you do? If it's not ready to show it's not ready to show. Oh, and if that's not a boot to the gut then how 'bout this: it's not $1,200 anymore... it's now $1,490. Ouch! Pre-orders start in April with delivery in November/December 2007. Still, there was a bit of good news that came from our meeting with Artemy Lebedev and Dimitry Tosy here at CeBIT in Hannover. First, the Optimus 103 gets a name change. While we were hoping for the Optimus Prime (there's more than meets the eye), it looks like they've settled on Optimus Maximus (the god of gods). Also, all the keys will in fact be OLED with an expected life span of only 5 years, depending upon use of course. Each 32 x 32 resolution OLED will remain stationary. Instead, the key-press mechanics are executed by a plastic cap which slides around the display like a sleeve to keep the wear and tear on the OLEDs to a minimum. Break a key? No problem, replacements will be offered for $10 a pop. Sorry, no freebies in the box like your Xmas tree lights -- we tried. And if you think that $1,490 is a bit too pricey for a 5-year keyboard, take heart: "two or three" additional keyboards are in the works with fewer programmable keys and a sub $1,000 price tag.
This is like the Hindenburg crashing into the Titanic...

Offline scottws

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Re: The last gaming site you'll ever need!
« Reply #25 on: Thursday, March 15, 2007, 08:09:25 PM »
Why even bother?  They are going to sell like... one.

This is honestly one of the stupidest fucking things I have ever seen.  a $1400 keyboard?  Haha.  I don't give a crap that it's all programmable and has pretty pictures on the keys.  Know how often I look at my keyboard?  Yeah, never.

And I already know a bunch of Photoshop keybinds.  I don't need some picture on a key to tell me.

Offline idolminds

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Re: The last gaming site you'll ever need!
« Reply #26 on: Thursday, March 15, 2007, 08:20:00 PM »
I was thinking about that. Showing the PS binds on there is cool...but whos going to spend that much for it? My first thought was professionals, but if you need a $1500 keyboard to use PS you'll be fired.

Why not just buy a Zboard? Do you know how many keysets you could buy for it for $1500?

Offline gpw11

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Re: The last gaming site you'll ever need!
« Reply #27 on: Thursday, March 15, 2007, 10:10:02 PM »
True dat, but I've never been overly fond of the Zboard.  Like I said, wicked idea, and in a few years when the price (and longevity) of OLED is more market friendly it'll be great.  For right now there's not much of a market for it because of the price.

That said, I wonder how much the markup is on it.  Art. Lebedev Studio seems to be held in pretty high regard among people who spend more money then they should on stuff like artsy clocks and erasers.  I imagine they'll turn a profit on the technology through the Optimus mini 3 and other cheaper keyboards while this will be something only a few will buy.

Anyways, the digg article that had this new news on it had maybe one of the unintentionally funniest comments I've come across in it.  Something like:

"Lol, what business newbs.  You price a product based on what people will pay for it, not what it costs to make.  Maybe one of these guys should go to a first year business class, they could have learned something that would have let them turn this into the hottest selling keyboard ever."

Think about that for a second. 

Offline PyroMenace

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Re: The last gaming site you'll ever need!
« Reply #28 on: Thursday, March 15, 2007, 10:44:12 PM »
Blood just shot out my nose after reading that comment.

Offline Pugnate

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Re: The last gaming site you'll ever need!
« Reply #29 on: Thursday, March 15, 2007, 11:26:43 PM »
Why even bother?  They are going to sell like... one.

This is honestly one of the stupidest fucking things I have ever seen.  a $1400 keyboard?  Haha.  I don't give a crap that it's all programmable and has pretty pictures on the keys.  Know how often I look at my keyboard?  Yeah, never.

And I already know a bunch of Photoshop keybinds.  I don't need some picture on a key to tell me.

Exactly... that's why I called it a scam, which was probably harsh since it is targeting hardcore enthusiasts. But it is pretty stupid for $1400 with no guarantees.

Quote
"Lol, what business newbs.  You price a product based on what people will pay for it, not what it costs to make.  Maybe one of these guys should go to a first year business class, they could have learned something that would have let them turn this into the hottest selling keyboard ever."

What an idiot... really...

Also trust me this keyboard will sell. Even at that price I've seen insane people wanting to pay that.

Offline Cobra951

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Re: The last gaming site you'll ever need!
« Reply #30 on: Friday, March 16, 2007, 03:00:34 AM »
Right.  And in order to make money, they should market just to that niche.  They should go the other way on the price, to compensate for lack of volume.  Here it is!  The unique upscale keyboard only for the distinguished gentleman who has everything, for a mere $12,000 US.