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PC master race builds from reddit of all places? and those builds still don't take into account the GDDR5 RAM and fast internal busses of the PS4. Yes, it matters. And they don't include the OS, which for gaming, has to be windows. Sure there's a few Linux releases but almost all big releases are Windows only and you know it.

Yeah, since we know that console piracy is rampant,

Not in the US it isn't. Are you from Europe/BRIC or the second or third world?

and we can buy exactly the same games at half the price.

What? Did you miss the FO4 announcement, where consoles will be paying $59.99-79.99, and PC gamers can already get it at $40 or there about.

Citation needed. Pre-orders are not available in the US so we have no official prices. Canada shows the PC/PS4/XB1 versions at the same price. and PC gamers can't "already get it" the game isn't even released yet.

Well, I guess the hundreds of free games on the PC are worthless then

Most F2P crap IS worthless.

and of course we can't forget the wide amount of emulation either,

You mean Piracy.

or thousands of abandonware titles out there.

No such thing..."Someone" still owns the copyright, even if they aren't enforcing it. It's still piracy.

and likely going to be getting another credit card next week(just a guess), since Sony's security is at 1999 levels

I could say the same about Valve:

http://www.1up.com/news/year-s...

but I guess if you have to spend 8 minutes searching for legal free games, that's too difficult.

Maybe you should spend less money on hardware, then maybe you could actually...buy games.

The original Kinect hardware was one of the fastest selling consumer electronics devices in history.

http://www.1up.com/news/kinect...

That was when it was an optional add-on.

My kids play X360 games via connect exclusively.

I mostly play FM4 on the 360, with a racing wheel. In fact, the only time a controller gets used is to navigate DVD menus.

It may have a character jump over a shark, would that do?

Nope.

You kinda missed the point there. It's called a stunt.
You know... basing the episode around an act intended to catch you attention instead of on actual story or plot. Or humor.

Occam says A in this case.

Actually, Occam says it's what I mentioned above - cherry picking. Also, confirmation bias.

I'm gonna make a wild guess and assume that your "the people I know IRL who don't think it's funny and don't like it are all uneducated high school dropouts" is a rather limited set.
Also, that you did no actual statistical analysis on the subject NOR actual inquiry into WHY those and other people find it not funny.

In other words, all your "conclusions" are actually based on time honored theory of "I like this, this is great, those who don't like it are stupid".

On the other hand, there are vast numbers of sources pointing out that many of people who don't find TBBT funny or likeable ARE quite intelligent and that they get the intended joke - only they find it not funny at best and cringe worthy at other times.

http://bigbangmistakes.tumblr.com/whydoesitsuck
http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=9112031
http://www.spectrecollie.com/archives/2013/01/my-problem-with-the-big-bang-theory
http://butmyopinionisright.tumblr.com/post/31079561065/the-problem-with-the-big-bang-theory

BTW, have you noticed just how much of it's humor is based on a) pop culture references, b) catch phrases and c) laugh track?
Neither of which is humor.
One is basic recognition (which presses some of the same buttons in your brain as "getting a joke") and the other two are borderline Pavlovian prods to try to incite laughter.
"LAUGH MONKEY BOY! LAUGH! BEJEZUZ! ZIMBABWE! BLOOBLOOBLUBLU! LISTEN TO THESE PEOPLE LAUGHING! IT IS SOOOO FUNNY! LAAAAUGH!"

While we're on the subject of pop culture references...
American Dad and Family Guy for instance do A LOT of the "pop culture instead of humor" thing.
Basically, all of its humor is in those bits that have no connection to the story otherwise.
Not sure about the older episodes but relatively recent seasons of The Simpsons are doing the same thing.
Except instead of cutting away to completely unrelated characters it's one of the usual clowns (Homer, Wiggum Sr. or Jr. etc.) that does the "IT'S FUNNY! LAUGH!" bit.

This is just more rumor mill junk! Reads like a hit piece put out by a competitor. Do none of you remember when games on the Sony platform broke because they were hacked and PSN was taken down?

http://www.1up.com/news/capcom-always-online-psn-drm-decided-case-by-case

http://www.ps3trophies.org/forum/announcements/39949-read-psn-service-down-some-titles-unplayable.html

Strange that it has come to this isn't it? Gaming has always been an investment, and early game consoles and games were relatively more expensive that they are today (see: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2010/10/an-inconvenient-truth-game-prices-have-come-down-with-time/ or http://www.1up.com/news/90s-game-price-comparison-charticle) and the truth is well developed games at reasonable prices simply aren't as safe an investment as a develop as you go/DLC-centric product. If you spend three years developing a title, and after the second year of development realize that play-testers and focus groups aren't responding well, or you've reached the realization that there is some technical (or other) limitation you can't overcome, you've lost at least those two years of development with no releasable product. If instead you try to cram the general mechanics into the game as rapidly as possible, and get the community play testing for you, and then monetize them to support continued development, not only do you take significantly less of an initial investment risk, but you also stand to profit off of your product for significantly longer than just the title's couple weeks or month at the top of the release charts. TF2 is of course the king of this, and the long lifespan of it probably reflects valve's business acumen. If I was a game developer, and you told me I could not only sell my title, but then, as sales began to drop of re-monetize the user-base through micro-payments literally YEARS after the game's release, why wouldn't I say yes? Especially after the considerable (and probably costly) development that went into the original release (many years. and more than one total overhaul), and the subsequent updates before you could buy things for the game. The Mann-conomy update (introducing micro-payments) went live on September 30th, 2010 but there had been 11 major content updates, and two addition community content updates since TF2's release nearly 3 years earlier (October 10th 2007).

For those not familiar with this company, who may ask "But won't they lose money if they take down the games?", let me give you some background. This is a company that would rather pull EVERY game on PSN than to lose even the slightest bit of control over their locked-down system. This is a company that will infect their CD's with viruses to prevent copying, a company that repeatedly kills its own platforms with its insistence on proprietary formats, a company that doesn't care if your old blu-ray player plays the latest blu-rays or not--a company that will remove any feature, cripple any platform, pull any game, destroy any product line--all to maintain control. If Sony were faced tomorrow morning with the choice between risking people copying even one of their movies and bulldozing the entire PSP line into a landfill, they would have that landfill full before the sun went down.

This is what happens when you allow a media producer to mix in the same company with the producer of the hardware that plays said media.

So if you were in charge, would you require the Wii U to have three slots, one each for NES, Super NES, and Nintendo 64 Game Paks? Would you require the Xbox 720 to have slots for Sega Master System cartridges, Sega Cards, and Sega Genesis and 32X cartridges? There are several ways that the Dreamcast acts as a bridge between Sega's and Microsoft's consoles, starting with the controller and the Windows API.

Other OS wasn't the only thing removed on the PS3 with firmware upgrades.

PS3 Users report latest Firmware disables some USB adapters

It was announced just last week that GOG is no longer focusing exclusively on old games.

I don't have a problem running games with high settings on a modest PC. AMD quad-3.4Gz CPU, $130, 8GB RAM, $55, AMD 6870 video card, $155. There is the core of a system for $340. Throw in a few bucks for a HD, monitor, power supply if you don't have a closet full of those (what are you doing here without that?).

Granted, I'm not doing multiple monitors all running 1920x1200 like this fellow, but I enjoy myself. And I use OnLive quite a bit too. I recently chronicled a few of my OnLive purchases at a 1Up.com blog. Add in Deus Ex for $25 with a 50% off coupon.

Multiplayer details over at 1UP.

There's no co-op, so the charm that Borderlands had running around in the wastes with a friend is pretty much not here. Personally, I think any time you cite the story as the primary reason you left out co-op, you need to reevaluate what players really want. Even more so when they're drawing parallels to between your game and one of the best co-op games in recent years. If I'm looking for co-op, I'm willing to accept the suspension of disbelief about my loner badass wandering around in the wastes with a second person of equal loner badassery.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/01/diablo-3-drm-requires-constant-internet-connection-until-you-crack-it-of-course/

and the 1up interview:>

http://www.1up.com/news/diablo-3-requires-online-when-playing

be sure to scroll down for the new internet meme, it has been a while since i had a good lol

Meh Blizzard now. I used to love d1 and d2, but.. well, I got older and I don't feel like bending over just because Pardo wants me to. I want a date and a hug and kiss in the morning. Sheeeeet...

http://www.1up.com/news/diablo-3-requires-online-when-playing

The best quote is from Rob Pardo (Executive Vice President of Blizzard):

While Pardo recognizes that people sometimes want or need to play offline (such as internet outages, or playing on a laptop during an airplane flight), he notes that the increased security, plus benefits like the above, outweigh those other concerns. "I want to play Diablo 3 on my laptop in a plane, but, well, there are other games to play for times like that."

how about RTFA (read THIS fucking article)
http://www.1up.com/news/diablo-3-requires-online-when-playing

you could argue that these features enhance gameplay/experience, and the online requirement isn't only for DRM/security (although simple auth like, SC2, should take care of those concerns)

really like the shared item stash (a la Torchlight)

A persistent friends list.
Cross-game chat via the RealID system.
Persistent characters that are stored server-side (no more having to play online once every 90 days, nor item duplication cheats).
Persistent party system.
Player-versus-player and public game matchmaking.
Dynamic drop-in/out for co-op
Larger item stash that gets shared among all of your characters (at the moment, up to 10)
The auction house, outlined here.
The Achievement system and detailed stat-tracking, both of which feed into the final point:
The Banner system, a visual way to display your prowess in the game. Banners start out like emblems, where you can choose from an array of symbols, patterns, and overall shape/design. Then, you can tweak its appearance through Achievements and other accomplishments. Examples Pardo cites include whether the character is in Hardcore mode, how many Achievements have been earned, how many PVP victories, and so forth. Additionally, the Banners also have gameplay features; in-game, rather than use Town Portal, you can click on a player's Banner to instantly teleport over to said player.

now, how about a release date?

How would you even make 3D the core part of the game? All the 3DS does is give you depth. You could probably build a puzzle platformer where you need depth to tell how to do the next jump, but that is really rather gimmicky and wouldn't work for a lot of games. That aside there isn't really much you can do with 3d, it doesn't give you any additional degrees of freedom as far as the camera is concerned, in fact it takes them away, as you can do longer use the tilt sensor and camera to shift the view around, the fixed viewing position makes such games on the 3DS impossible to do in 3D.

So the problem really isn't the slider, but that depth isn't a gameplay changer, its just additional fidelity, like going from 16bit colordepth to 32bit. Looks a little nicer, but doesn't really change the games you can do.

And the 3D-effects are underwhelming at most.

I think the biggest problem of todays "3D" is simply that it is relatively useless for gameplay. All you get is stereoscopy from a single fixed viewpoint, essentially the same what a 2D display gives you, except with two views. Thus you get depth, but not the ability to look around objects or change your view position.

The ability to look around things is where stuff would actually get interesting, as it could enhance gameplay and fix perspective errors, basically giving you extremely intuitive camera controls and a proper view, simply by moving your head around. The irony is that that effect doesn't actually work in 3D mode, tilting the console or your head breaks 3D, thus games that allow you to "look around" objects only work in 2D with having the camera or tilt sensor do the tracking and thus changes of the view position.

There is still some hope that Sony or Microsoft might add head tracking to their console, thus giving you 3D and the ability to look around things, but as far as glass-less 3D is concerned that is basically impossible with current flat displays and thus with the 3DS.

Yeah, there is a good summary here with some useful links:

http://www.1up.com/news/portal-2-released-early

Actually, the current somewhat substantiated rumor is that Portal 2 will be released early on friday.

And here's another article from 1UP.

FWIW, that was Bioshock 2, not a Bioware game.

What is more puzzling is what the existence of two camps creating such huge codebases for a fundamental application type says about the whole state of open source development at this time. It clearly isn't the idealistic world it tries to present itself as."

How exactly is this different from, say, a developer or team of videogame developers, leaving a company they were fed up with, to create their own with new and fresh ideas for innovative and competitive products? Happens all the time.

Ah, yes, almost forgot this tiny difference: with open source software, the LibreOffice guys didn't have to start from scratch...

CPU implemented in minecraft

I guess this means BioWare is soon to be defunct or made an MMO factory, seeing as selling 2 million copies of Mass Effect 2 in the first week just isn't good enough for EA.

Consider these cases:

1. I post 1.4gb of credit card numbers online in the ideal that it will destroy the financial system and create world anarcho-socialism.

My bank sends me a new card with a new number and new expiration date. I am inconvenienced during the time I can't use that card.

2. You write a novel; it takes you two years. I post it online in Kindle, Nook and Sony reader formats.

Hard and soft cover sales are unlikely effected. The fans of the author shun the pirated copy.

3. You take out $20m in loans to make a movie or a video game, and you spend five years of your life on the project, hoping that you can leverage this into a career. I post your game or movie online before it is released.

This happens quite often. Hollywood and the gaming studios are posting record profits. As for how you manage to leverage a $20 million dollar loan on your debut, I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter.

We'll never know how sales are affected because we will never know if the people downloading would have bought it anyway,

From http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/experienced-points/7225-Experienced-Points-Piracy-Numbers:
How many people use the pirated version as an extended demo?

Assuming someone tries a game and then goes out and buys it, they are basically indistinguishable from the previous group who buys it and then "pirates" it. They're just doing it in a different order. In any case, these two groups combined simply can't account for more than one in nine downloads.

However, if you're willing to entertain an anecdote (which is the only thing we have to work with in a situation like this where nobody will show their cards to anyone else) then the story of iPhone game Tap-Fu is fairly instructive. The creators tracked both pirates and customers as they submitted high scores. They even kept track of how many people (as identified by their device) played as a pirate and then later as a legit customer. The result:

Not one. Ever.

Remember that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data". One case doesn't describe the industry in general. Also remember: None!

We may never know for sure, but there are indications.

...but what's really lost is the newness of the material. If your neighbor reads the newspaper, figures out which are the good stories, and then tells you about them while you're fishing, what incentive do you have to buy the newspaper?

The experience of not receiving the stories as remembered by my neighbor. His ideals on which are the "good stories" probably differ from mine.

We -- the hackers of today -- need to think long and hard about this. By destroying the ability of others to profit from their work,

Wait. What? Also from the Escapist article linked above:

How rampant is piracy?

In 2008, Reflexive looked at the people who submitted high scores for Ricochet Infinity and found that 92% of all players were using pirated copies of the game. Also that year 2DBoy reported 90% piracy on World of Goo. Last year developer Beautiful Game Studios' claimed that Championship Manager was the victim of a 90% piracy rate. During the week the Demigod was released, publisher Stardock found that 85% of all players looking for a game were pirates. All of these are PC titles.

It's very interesting how close all of these numbers are, despite the diversity of the games themselves. Casual and hardcore. Esoteric and mainstream. Indie and big-budget. DRM and DRM-free. N

A coupla things come to mind here. First, this infographic shows as of May, the Wii is monstrously successful. It's been profitable from day one. Nintendo did just release their first six-month net loss in seven years and are predicting falling revenues as Wii sales stall but they've been stockpiling cash for years. So while they do have an issue to address there I think they've got a handle on it.

Second, and more importantly, mobile gaming is where the industry is heading. And guess who has a commanding lead in that market space? That's right, Nintendo. They sell more mobile/handheld gaming devices than anybody else in the world. The only current competition they even have is Apple as more and more people want to play games on their iPhones and to a lesser extent the Android platform (but while that benefits Google it doesn't make them so much of a direct competitor to Nintendo as Apple is). Yes, I've played around with a PSP and think they're okay but the market is not going for them and Sony has no clue what the mobile market wants.

Anyway, does Nintendo need to not rest on its laurels and drop the price of the Wii or take some kind of action to reinvigorate the product line? Yes. Will they? Most likely. Will it work? Probably...but no way to be certain.

And do they need to get a more capable game console on the market soon? I think so. But I also think it's BS that they're not planning on that already. The Wii was available to purchase in the US exactly 4 years ago today. The GameCube 5 yrs before that. The Nintendo 64 was 5 yrs before that. The SNES was a little over 5 yrs before that.

I'd be surprised if there's not a Wii 2 or whatever by the 2011 Christmas shopping season. But even if there's not, I'd be hard pressed to say Nintendo's down for the count. They've been around longer than any other game company. And they're surprisingly well managed.

Game-Breaking Bug.

Officially acknowledged by Nintendo. What's worse, their "solution" involved gamers actually mailing an SD card to them to have the savefile "repaired."

Insanity.

Right, let me get back to you while I get done playing Sonic Adventure 5 on my Dreamcast 2.

You misspelled "Sonic 2006 on your Xbox 360". What do you get when you add a second stick to a Dreamcast controller?

Well like Metal Gear it won't be a launch game, and i don't know if it's the type of RPG you care about or not, but Class of Heroes is getting ported to 3DS.

As well as being an interesting (albeit divisive) RPG itself, the indication that PSP games will be getting ported to 3DS in general is very good news. I'm hoping to see a port of Jeanne d'Arc myself, and maybe the re-translated FF Tactics.

I wish the article really went more into depth. IMHO Publishers these days are not all that what they are cracked up to be , bunch of marketing whores. Look at the fiasco with CIV5 from 2k almost unplayable on most non english windows systems and the crash issues with most nvidia cards. http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=88969

Every major gaming magazine has given it almost 8/10 , while actually (as I long time civ player) I don't think it is all that great except for the perty graphics. Dumbed down for the console. At least this guy over at 1up got it right, I guess 2k didn't send him any gifts.
http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?pager.offset=1&cId=3181540&p=1

But what is the rest of the coverage besides recycled PR anyway? Personally I just try and get a sense of a game I'm interested in and then stop looking at coverage on it. I just want to see the basic idea of the game and what mechanics it uses, as soon as I'm interested then I cut off coverage because I don't want anything spoiled, not even the introduction. In other media I also avoid trailers because of how much they will spoil the actual movie for example. The way a game starts is meant to draw you in and intrigue you, and if you hear a lot about it beforehand, it doesn't have the same impact when you actually play the game.

There have been situations with games such as Super Smash Bros Brawl where they drip feed you with information, every day you see a new character, or a new move, or a new item you will be using in the game. By the time the game comes out I'm sick of it already and I don't even want to see it anymore. Or sometimes development time will drag on and paying attention to a game's coverage is like torturing yourself, such as with Dragon Quest IX or Duke Nukem Forever. In that case, coverage will often turn me off of a game, and if I already know I want to play it, what's the point? I've got better things to do.

Nowadays I just listen to a few podcasts where people don't talk so formally about their experiences and they often talk game theory which is much more interesting to me compared to regurgitated PR. I would recommend A Life Well Wasted, The Brainy Gamer, Gamasutra Podcast, In-Game Chat, Irrational Behavior, Mobcast, and Retronauts. If you also like those, you might like Geekbox, RebelFM, 1up Oddcast, Weekend Confirmed, Player One Podcast, Joystiq Podcast, Gamers with Jobs, Drunken Gamers Radio, IGN GameScoop and CAGCast. Hey, it makes work and commutes go by fast.

But what is the rest of the coverage besides recycled PR anyway? Personally I just try and get a sense of a game I'm interested in and then stop looking at coverage on it. I just want to see the basic idea of the game and what mechanics it uses, as soon as I'm interested then I cut off coverage because I don't want anything spoiled, not even the introduction. In other media I also avoid trailers because of how much they will spoil the actual movie for example. The way a game starts is meant to draw you in and intrigue you, and if you hear a lot about it beforehand, it doesn't have the same impact when you actually play the game.

There have been situations with games such as Super Smash Bros Brawl where they drip feed you with information, every day you see a new character, or a new move, or a new item you will be using in the game. By the time the game comes out I'm sick of it already and I don't even want to see it anymore. Or sometimes development time will drag on and paying attention to a game's coverage is like torturing yourself, such as with Dragon Quest IX or Duke Nukem Forever. In that case, coverage will often turn me off of a game, and if I already know I want to play it, what's the point? I've got better things to do.

Nowadays I just listen to a few podcasts where people don't talk so formally about their experiences and they often talk game theory which is much more interesting to me compared to regurgitated PR. I would recommend A Life Well Wasted, The Brainy Gamer, Gamasutra Podcast, In-Game Chat, Irrational Behavior, Mobcast, and Retronauts. If you also like those, you might like Geekbox, RebelFM, 1up Oddcast, Weekend Confirmed, Player One Podcast, Joystiq Podcast, Gamers with Jobs, Drunken Gamers Radio, IGN GameScoop and CAGCast. Hey, it makes work and commutes go by fast.

You should really read this article: http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3147544

The -entire- early gaming industry was based off of clones. And yes, clones a million times more similar than FarmVille is to FarmTown. Of course, we don't really remember them too much because we have biases towards the originals.

Well, since I use Linux I do not need to make illegal copies, nor do I have the time for that because free software is released at such a fast rate that I have no hope to learn to use all of it in my lifetime.

Not all non-free applications have free counterparts. For example, what is a close substitute for each of 1UP's top PS3 games of 2010 that is distributed as free software?

Yeah... there's a lot of vocal people saying how evil DLC is, and yet Blizzard sold $2mil of sparkle ponies in the first four hours: http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3178849 . Methinks you're only hearing people who hate DLC, everyone who likes it is off handing their credit card details to Blizzard & co....

When Nintendo tried with the NES they were bitchslapped so hard in court.

When and where did this "bitchslapping" occur? All I remember is something like this, where not only did Nintendo not get bitch slapped, but the company (Atari) attempting to circumvent the 10NES chip did.

--Jeremy

EA _used_ to be evil. They've actually reformed a lot, partially through lawsuits (the EA Spouse thing) and partly through the actions of their new CEO John Riccitiello. He instituted a lot of changes when he took over, including a focus on developing new games rather than just making sequel after sequel after sequel. Unfortunately the game buying public has responded by... not buying the new games they've always said they wanted, which has driven down EA stock prices and puts Riccitiello at serious risk of being ousted and EA at potential risk of being acquired by someone who would probably be more willing to exploit their existing library rather than developing new ideas.

Plus, you've got to love their response to this current situation, which was reported in 1UP's and Gamasutra's articles. Since EA was supposedly part of the reason West and Zampella got fired, reporters contacted EA's "director of corporate communications" Jeff Brown, who said "We don't have the time to comment on the many lawsuits Activision files against its employees and creative partners."

And for my own thoughts, as i said in response to an earlier Slashdot article, if the Justice Department doesn't think a company refusing to hire someone who previously worked at a competitor is legal, my gut feeling is that they won't look too kindly on a company firing someone for talking to a competitor about a possible job either. Of course i am not a lawyer, so we'll have to wait to see if Activision is actually as screwed as i think they probably are.

This does not bode well for Activision, who are counter-suing the former executives of Infinity Ward for being "insubordinate [...] self-serving schemers."

Their supposed crime? Interviewing with EA for a job.

The "supposed" part should be doubly emphasized. First of all, because so far at least Activision hasn't actually provided any proof that the studio heads were actually doing that. Second of all, because if the Justice Department thinks refusing to hire people because the worked for a competitor is illegal, how are they going to respond to a policy of firing any employees that are suspected of talking to a competitor about a job? Presuming no actual trade secrets were being shared Activision my be setting _themselves_ up for further lawsuits or investigations. Everyone knows that if your current company finds out that you're shopping around for a new job that there might be consequences, but most companies aren't stupid enough to announce in a legal document that it was a direct response intended as a punishment for "misbehaving" employees.

You forgot this pic of Gordon Freeman practicing for a headcrab invasion.

The lack of awareness (or interest) isn't limited to movie watching, either -- and here's where you should start paying attention for an idea on how the mass market will respond in the next few years. Only 30% of Xbox 360 owners were aware of the HD graphics capabilities of the machine, whereas that number rises to 50% with PS3. Considering the inclusion of a cheap Blu-ray player in the PS3, that's not so surprising, but, either way, a startling number of "HD gamers" don't know about -- or don't care about -- HD.

I think you'll find there are still huge numbers of people without HD TV as there hasn't been a reason for most people to get it. I'm sure both the 360 and PS3 are helping increase that. The PS3 more so because of blu-ray but considering more people own a Wii than any other console, it's quite safe to say that most people still don't care about HD TV so Netflix doesn't really have to worry.

I like HD, it's awesome, but I (like a lot of people on this site) aren't normal people so while hearing everyone on Slashdot talk about HD TV might make it sound like it's a big thing in actual fact it's not.

I think Locke was referring to this.

To be fair, an SSH client/terminal emulator isn't exactly stretching the limits of Windows APIs, as compared to e.g. GTA 4.

According to 1up, Blizzard is promising between 26-30 missions per game. If so, that puts each game at 2/3 the size of SC1 (at least in terms of missions). But do you think they'll be charging 2/3 the price? Of course not. Do you have a reliable source where blizzard promises 40 missions per game?

The other potential issue I see is that once the second game comes out, anyone who plays multiplayer is going to have to buy the second game too if they want to keep playing multiplayer (as happened with SC1 and Brood War).

They've said they won't do that, that anyone with the first game will be able to play multiplayer with the other two, but unless they actually patch the first game with new units from the second and third games I see it as extremely unlikely, and I also see it as unlikely that they would release two more games without adding new units to the factions.

"Ahead of: Halo (any of them), Xbox 360 versions of Call of Duty (any of them), Myst, GTA4 (360), Gears of War (any of them), Final Fantasy 7, Gran Turismo 4"

Which means it has now also outsold MW2 on every platform, including the 360, _individually_ (not all combined.) Just like Reggie bet that it would. He originally said it would beat Modern Warfare 2 on one platform by the end of January. (The person he was interviewing then specified the 360 and Reggie didn't seem to object. Which led to a lot of controversy amongst fanboys when it seemed like Mario might beat the PS3 sales but not the 360 sales, but that's all moot now.)

After the response to the initial sales of Modern Warfare 2 in November, a lot of people are going to be eating crow over that one :)

Their logo could be cute little babies... playing Halo.

You mean, something like this?

this was pretty obviously an Xbox game originally

Not so much - it's been in development since 2004, and was originally planned as PC only, and indeed was still being talked about as PC only back in 2008.

You're right about the simplicity of some of the models (although I'm pretty sure they are using bump mapping), but that's not because they were originally targeting consoles.

Kinda hard to have PvP when there's no multiplayer...

Resident Evil 4 was one of the best selling Wii games. Just because The Conduit and Mad World didn't sell well, does not mean that there's not a market for M rated games. Fact of the matter is that they just weren't very good games, regardless of what the media said.

http://kotaku.com/5395956/the-10-most-avidly+played-wii-games-in-america-as-of-nov-1

Honestly, look at that chart. I'm seeing a shitload of hardcore games there (no, I don't judge whether a game is for the hardcore or not by the rating, any more than I judge movies that way). What I'm not seeing a lot of is deca sports and catz, regardless of what the media tells you. The Wii market is starving for hardcore games, and the 3rd parties just simply have not delivered. Nintendo sat this one out and made casual games, because the 3rd parties have been bitching bitterly for years that they can't compete with Nintendo. And what do they do? They follow in Nintendo's footsteps again. Pathetic.

Nintendo just needs to come back and rule the roost again. Metroid: Other M is a good start. New Super Mario Bros Wii, Mario Galaxy 2, and the rumoured new Zelda should do the trick. Hardcore gamers still own their Wiis. They just aren't buying anything because there's fuck all to play.

Once the phone is rebooted, all you have to do is download a cracked version of the app from one of the MANY places on the internet, add it to iTunes, sync, and you are done.
NOTE: Surprisingly this is MUCH easier than actually buying it on iTunes!!

The game is 1.99 on Itunes. If it were easier to buy on Itunes than to pirate it, people wouldn't be pirating it as much. Perhaps the reason the piracy is so prevalent is that people find it easier to pirate than to purchase.
If you remember, people who had bought Spore were using pirated copies of it in order to avoid the machine crashing DRM that came bundled, or rather bungled, along with the game. In addition, there were new stories about the piracy increasing as a result of the inconvenient DRM issues.

When it is easier to pirate a game than buy it, what do you think people are going to do? Apple gets 30% of the gross from those games on the app store, so its their fault that the process of buying an app isn't easier than just pirating.

You are totally clueless.

Operating profit per console of $6, for a console that costs $250 is 2.4%. Operating profit is calculated before interest costs and taxes. Depending on Japanese taxes this might be (let's be very generous) a contribution of 2%. If you can put money in the bank and receive 0.5%, then a risky gamble of 2% return, or less than that when dividends are taxed, is idiotic. Hence, following those rules Nintendo would not have been able to fund production in the first place because nobody would have given them money. And all of that assumes Nintendo has zero debt incurred to fund production. In fact, it also ignores that projects that succeed must cover the cost of all projects that fail.

Wait, you're calling this guy clueless? Have you ever noticed the price trend in technology components?

Nintendo made $6 per Wii... in September 2006. Technology prices fall rapidly, so it was certainly higher than that in 2007, 2008, and 2009. Nintendo managed to keep the Wii the same price for three years, before finally dropping it to $200 five days ago.

For comparison, Microsoft was losing $71 per unit on the $399 Xbox 360 in at launch in 2005. By the end of 2006, the same model was now at break-even.

Er, Competitive Multiplayer, as opposed to Co-Op. http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3173252