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No, you are still wrong here, and are comparing apples and oranges. Imagery is just that, and holds no inherent threat. Or maybe you fear for your life from everyone that's ever played Wolfenstein? Perhaps you should educate yourself on the law before you try to hold an argument about aspects of it.

Wolfenstein involves killing Nazis, and is a game, rather than say, a monument or shrine.

Still, you'd find that it was censored. in Germany.

A better argument might that the Swastika symbol is not exclusive to Nazi Germany, but then, that's the problem with this discussion, it's so muddled nobody is really being coherent about it.

And not just "suits" as in executives who traditionally wear business suits. It can also mean lawsuits if Activision starts using the copyright in its games to take down streams of rival leagues. At least Capcom,[1] Nintendo,[1] and Sega[2] have been known to use copyright against fan videos and streams, and Activision had a TV rights dispute with KeSPA a few years back.

[1] Kyle Orland
[2] Tony Ponce
[3] Wikipedia

But I'd have just pointed at pants. Those are ubiquitous too. How many people do you know that could make a pair? Or even repair them? Hem them? Replace a button?

Then I guess I must be in a minority. I've replaced buttons on store-bought clothes. I've even made my own pants, but they have a drawstring closure instead of a button closure because I haven't learned buttonholes yet. And before I learned pants, I was making ankle-length shirts to wear.

Well... Mario Maker launched last week.... I'd say the number of average people designing game levels has quite possibly spiked to an all time high. ;)

For one thing, this is Nintendo catching up to where Sony was years ago with LittleBigPlanet. For another, around the launch of Super Mario Maker, Nintendo went on a DMCA takedown streak on YouTube, handing out copyright strikes to uploaders of TAS and Kaizo videos.

Puns aside about consoles insomnia. Wasting $100s of dollars of you power bill every year is not a serious concern for the video game industry. In 2008 the NRDC, the US EPA with their EnergyStarWalmart beat the console industry about the head and neck and the video game industry managed to sandbag any regulation that even a GE or Sylvania could not for lighting. The reason is simple sloth and incompetence. Simply put the problem is not energy used during game play , but the lack of a meaningful sleep mode. This lack of sleep mode is driven by poor APIs to book mark game status and put the console into sleep mode. The other energy driver is the console companies instant on collecting detailed data of how you use your device and uploading it when you are not playing plus forcing add and other "content" down to your console when it should be sleeping.

Thats "one" persons opinion

Everything is one person's opinion until it's tested in a court of law. The article I linked states that such a case has been decided for board games, but not for video games.

Look, the only company that really doesn't care for streaming is Nintendo, goes to show just how stuck in the past they are.

From the article I linked: "Capcom can make you get a license for the 'public performance' of the game. In fact, that is exactly what Capcom does with for-profit tournaments" with games in the Street Fighter series. Blizzard likewise has tried to use copyright to give one Korean TV network exclusive rights to StarCraft II . Sega at one time did a massive takedown of its Shining RPG series on YouTube.

Streaming is built right in to the PS4 and Xbox One.

From the manual: "For some games, there might be scenes in which video cannot be recorded. The maximum 15 minutes of gameplay that are saved as a video clip do not include scenes in which video cannot be recorded. An icon is displayed in the upper left corner of the screen at the start and end of these scenes." This Ars Technica article agrees. Is a licensee allowed to designate the entire game as such a scene? Apparently so, according to this Polygon article and this reddit post.

I don't disagree that nostalgia sells, but I do disagree that what we are seeing here is purely nostalgia-driven. I, for one, prefer unrealistic "drift-style" racers to simulations - I get a lot of enjoyment from going as fast as possible, negotiating courses through a mixture of careful positioning and controlled drifts, with the height of skill being completing a lap without releasing the accelerator, without crashing.

Games which deliberately ape the looks & sounds produced by old systems may indeed rely heavily on nostalgia, but there are plenty of other games out there maintaining the old-fashioned arcade driving mechanics, whilst taking full advantage of modern hardware. Personally I would put Mario Kart 8 in this category (although it is debatable whether the Wii U can be called "modern" in the graphics department). In TFA itself, the Power Drive 2000 trailer may have retro music and a retro *feel* to the graphics, but the graphical fidelity itself is not artificially restricted. Elsewhere on Kickstarter, Formula Fusion [1] seeks to recreate the style and mechanics of the WipEout series, whilst not in any way pretending to be an old game - I for one am excited by the prospect of finally having what is essentially WipEout (in all but name) running on modern PC hardware, with all the bells, whistles and convenience that implies, but would probably be put off if they were to deliberately attempt an original-PlayStation aesthetic. The 90s Arcade Racer [2] is definitely playing heavily on nostalgia, littered with references to (as you may have guessed) various 90s arcade games, but again, it seeks to make the best of the underlying hardware.

Nostalgia is certainly one aspect of all this, but don't underestimate the number of people who simply find these kind of games fun, and want to be able to play them easily & legally on contemporary hardware! I suspect I am not alone in finding that simulation-style games are not enjoyable without matching realistic controls, but have neither the space to dedicate to wheels, joysticks, throttles, pedals etc. - nor do I particularly want to spend the money or devote the time. For example, much as I am pleased that Elite: Dangerous and Star Citizen exist, I personally am holding out for No Man's Sky, simply because releasing on PS4 first means it is far more likely to have a simple control scheme which works on common controllers. Many will probably decry it as "dumbed down" or "retro"; I say it is just a different design decision.

[1] http://www.r8games.com/
[2] http://www.destructoid.com/rem...

You can use the controller signals as a data connection on the super nintendo. I'm assuming you could do it on an NES also.

1) Nobody can really say what Steam's royalty rates are. They almost certainly vary dependent on the risk of the game itself (low cost probably = high royalty and vice versa). However, Tripwire have said this:

http://www.destructoid.com/tri...

"Let me just say that our royalty deal was great, and is in line with what I understand that other digital distribution services are offering"

So, no, 30-40% isn't some set figure, it's some rumour on the Internet dredged up by someone who's in breach of their NDA in doing so anyway and I don't think any serious game studio would risk that.

2) So what? If you want to use Source, you'll pay. If it's not good value, nobody would use Source (or, by extension, Steam). It's really that simple. If that's the market rate, that's the market rate for PC digital distribution of something using their own engine, and yet console developers and all kinds are using it, then that's what it costs and it's worth that to you, or not.

There aren't a dearth of games using Source and neither are there an overwhelmingly majority. So it's probably about right in terms of value even if it DOES cost more (which isn't a given at all).

Given that source has been around since 2004, and EA etc. are happy publishing Source Games (don't EA own Origin?), I hardly think there's a big problem there.

Absolutely agree! How Rock Band jumped the shark ...

1. In Rock Band 1 you could slow the practice speed down to 50% speed. In Rock Band 3 some idiot designer raised this to 70%!? WTF? I'm trying to _learn_ the song. Allow me to slow this down to _25%_ for some of those songs.

2. Give me an option to show me the notes in _actual_ music notation so I can **learn to read music**. I _want_ to see the notes in Treble Cleff and/or Bass Clef.

Color-coding the music was brilliant. Teachers even used it to _actually_ teach students!

3. For the love of god use a _standard_ USB connection.

Stop locking me into your shitty proprietary vendor lock-in peripherals. If I buy a guitar, drums, or keyboard it should work across ALL games and ALL platforms: Xbox360, Xbone, PS3, PS4.

4. Stop the bullshit "No Export" option. WTF can't I export it from Rock Band 2 and import it into Rock Band 3 if I own *both* ??

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

5. Provide the band's famous song(s) not their shitty unknown songs of bands we love.

Why can't we buy Journey's "Any Way You Want It"?? We're stuck with the crappy: "Don't Stop Believing"

And now we can't even buy that??

* http://www.rockbandaide.com/20...

Greed ruined the music games.

The blame game has always been popular. It is always some made up bullshit excuse instead of finding & treating the root problem. One small set (or sect/group/cult) of society tries to blame an inanimate object for all of society's woes and spreads their propaganda to anyone who will listen.

Every "next technology" is always scapegoated.

1900 Film
1920 Prohibition (Alcohol), Phonographs
1930 Jazz, Movies
1940 Radio
1950 Dancing
1960 Psychedelic Drugs, Sex
1970 Rock n Roll, Movies (again)
1980 MTV, DnD, Heavy Metal
1990 Computer Games
2000 Internet and "strangers online"
2010 Guns

Then you have idiot psychiatrists like this who say 20+ year olds playing computer games is not "normal."
http://www.destructoid.com/pla...

To which I'll counter:

1. Hey fucking retard -- the medium is irrelevant.
Why is playing a card, board, or sports game like poker, go, chess, or baseball / hockey / basketball / etc. considered "normal", yet playing a digital game isn't normal??

2. Well guess what -- all these people were not normal as well:

Leonardo da Vinci was not normal
Isaac Newton was not normal
Charles Darwin was not normal
Albert Einstein was not normal
Stephen Hawking is not normal

Normal people don't do exceptional things.

The real issue is:

Are _you_ balanced in your daily activities, responsibilities, and hobbies?

Yeah which is why the PC died in the 80s, it being open killed any reason to develop for it...oh wait...hell if anything I'd say being open is what has caused the indie game explosion, with anybody with a really good idea (and a little help from kickstarter) coming out with completely new takes on traditional gaming.

Ryse looks pretty good.

Unfortunately, that's exactly all there seems to be to it.

Gamespot: 4 / 10
http://www.gamespot.com/ryse-son-of-rome/
"You are not entertained. Ryse is all sizzle and no steak, a stunning visage paired with a vapid personality."

EuroGamer: 5 / 10
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-11-21-ryse-son-of-rome-review
"There's no brains, no muscle, no fibre beneath Ryse's extravagantly engineered good looks - this game rings loud but hollow."

Polygon: 6 / 10
http://www.polygon.com/2013/11/21/5128888/ryse-son-of-rome-xbox-one-review
"Ryse has all the guts of next-gen — often quite literally — but none of the glory."

Destructoid: 5 / 10
http://www.destructoid.com/review-ryse-son-of-rome-265770.phtml
"An exercise in apathy, neither Solid nor Liquid. Not exactly bad, but not very good either. Just a bit 'meh,' really."

Two examples, among many:

1. Disney corporation - With Walt Disney long gone, are you saying that all the copyrights should have disappeared so now Mickey and crew are in the public domain?
2. Lord of the Rings - J.R.R Tolkein is gone, and was certainly dead before the movies and the whole resurgance of the I.P. Without the copyright, there likely would have not been any movies by Jackson. There would, however, probably have been plenty of cheaper knockoffs and assorted Rule #34s.

While I agree in principle, copyrights/trademarks should die or have steep fees to continue to be valid. I'd add another, it MUST be actively used in creation of new products. If it hasn't been used in over 5 years (maybe 10), I'd say it's time to invalidate the copyright and release to the public domain. See Sega and Streets of Rage. The last game was for the Genesis and was released in 1994, yet when some die-hard fans come togethor to remake their favorite game and release it, for free, with all statements saying "we aren't sega, this is their copyright", Sega comes down with the iron boot.

introduced by Brad Wardell of Stardock? That certainly went well for them with Elemental : War of Magic, that was completely unplayable on release and basically not complete. It was so bad that they had to give away the expansion, Elemental: Fallen Enchantress for free?

http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/09/03/elemental-launch-was-catastrophic-poor-judgment/
http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/10/26/fallen-enchantress-free-elemental-stardock/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamer's_Bill_of_Rights
http://www.destructoid.com/crashes-and-drama-surround-elemental-s-launch-182350.phtml

Destructoid.com - stuck trying to read assets from "craveonline.com", "bulk2.destructoid.com", etc. When it finally comes up, we get a giant picture from Teenage Pokemon, followed by clips from stories. Plus lots of ads.

Their RSS feed is more readable and loads quickly. Now we get to see the content.

It's just some gamer's blog. "This is my favorite episode so far." "There's not a whole lot of information disclosed on how and when the game will released". "Ten golden rules of online gaming." (the usual excuse for hanging ads on every paragraph.) "We had a delightful little Saturday Morning Hangover this morning, playing the recently released Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds." No insights. No inside information. Not even good trip reports.

Why should this guy expect to make money for writing a personal blog about his hobby?

and could potentially hurt the XBox brand as collateral damage

Xbox is still losing money. It broken even for a short while but has had only one break in it's long line of losing money. Yes, the brand could be hurt further, but not much.

For a while they were losing money hand over fist ... until around 2009Q4

http://www.forbes.com/global/2005/1003/036A_4.html
The Xbox game console is hot, but its division has lost $4 billion in four years and isn't yet in the black.

Although it looks like they are back to losing money again ...
http://www.destructoid.com/microsoft-s-xbox-division-loses-229-million-226215.phtml

Their Annual Report is not the place to look ...
http://www.microsoft.com/investor/AnnualReports/default.aspx ... instead you will want the Quarterly Reports. You can find the XBox losses in "Microsoft Entertainment Division" and/or "Entertainment & Devices Division"
http://www.microsoft.com/investor/SEC/default.aspx

Something like kickstarter is a must if you want to develop any large games.

If it's a smaller game you can:
  * Sell until a certain goal ($10000) is reached and then release the source (having annouced this in advance, of course)
  * Accept donations
  * Sell in-game stuff. Like items, and extras that don't really affect gameplay, but people still pay for. Like hats!

Many things on Kickstarter are already in production but need some extra funding to see final light. The Leisure Suit Larry people, as I understand it, are working on the "original" game with updated graphics after acquiring the license and original developer, but it obviously isn't done yet since some of the rewards are to add supporters in as in-game graphics. I use quotes around original because the original game was Softporn Adventure by Charles Benton, which was nearly identical but all text based (and published by On-Line Systems, which became Sierra On-Line.

As for amateurish, who knows - even corporate funded games with good leads can do that; as for pocketing the money, I don't feel like that is an issue because usually the pledge includes the game itself, access to the closed beta, or some other reward. It is probably a lot more risky to support a product that has not started development, but in the same light people like Brian Fargo have been in the industry a long time and can be seen as more trustworthy than others. He obviously hasn't managed to get corporate backing to do Wasteland 2, which is why he's appealing to fans of the game. Basically, for your pledge you are getting something out of it, not just giving them boatloads of cash to do with as they please.

http://www.destructoid.com/max-payne-3-potentially-cost-105-million-to-develop-211058.phtml

I interviewed Brian Fargo recently, and he cited $20 million dollars as the price point to get in the AAA market.

There are only 25 PS3 titles to ever reach 1 million sales. Most games will not sell 1 million copies. When I look at a practical business model, I'm assuming a relatively low budget ($20 million as opposed to $100 million for titles like Max Payne 3) but also assuming I'm not selling 1 million copies.

And funny that you cite Fallout: New Vegas, but Obsidian just ended up laying off 30 people. The owner of the company hasn't taken any salary in over six months and they're fighting bankruptcy. But surely, they're making too much money and should lay off the rest of their staff.

Having wi-fi / GPRS connectivity with ones of those touch-screen phones still amazes me. There might not be the standard button controllers like a traditional hand-held, but being able to download a new application or game straight off the marketplace website is one of the greatest advantages that they have.

In the past, to get a new game for a handheld or home console, you would have to rearrange your calendar to make time to visit the local game-store. Even then, they might have sold out, might not have decided it was worth stocking or still waiting to get enough pre-orders.If you went abroad on holiday and wanted to buy a title for the kids, you'd have to find a store first, then figure out how to get there and back again. (same with internet cafe's). Now, you just go online and make the download.

Not surprisingly, retailers are going bankrupt.
GAME preparing to go bankrupt

As shown on http://www.destructoid.com/crysis-2-huge-success-xbox-360-dominates-sales-197396.phtml

XBox made up 57% of the sales, 29% for PS3 and PC only 14%. Probably in part to the 3 million downloads of the game via torrents.

Perhaps their crappy sales numbers are in some large part due to what the parent said. The vast majority of "PC" games these days are just crappy console ports. It's hard to get too excited about dropping 60 bucks on a game that you'll likely play once and then only rarely, if ever, again. I'm sure the counter argument to this is that no one buys Crysis/MW/WhateverFPSIsHot for the single player campaign. Maybe that is true. Personally, bad single player == no deal.

As shown on http://www.destructoid.com/crysis-2-huge-success-xbox-360-dominates-sales-197396.phtml XBox made up 57% of the sales, 29% for PS3 and PC only 14%. Probably in part to the 3 million downloads of the game via torrents.

They have only reduced their support, rather than fully withdrawn it.

According to Destructoid they are still members of The ESA which still supports SOPA.

Don't think for a second that this wouldn't happen in the USA. Most recently, EA's Medal of Honor shooter in 2010 was boycotted in military stores due to fact that you could play as the Taliban. EA eventually caved in and changed the enemy to "Opposing force".

Best example of that: http://bulk2.destructoid.com/ul/154944-this-is-what-the-modern-warfare-2-boycotters-are-playing/hahahahahahaha-noscale.jpg

Considering... http://www.destructoid.com/pc-vs-console-gaming-infographic-pc-is-making-a-comeback-212611.phtml

What's really amused me is the review scores controversy that Gears 3 has generated. ...CliffyB really does come over as a prize arsehole through those comments. Particularly since the Eurogamer review in question felt... well... perfectly fair to me.

And what comments are you referring to? I followed your link, and several other links from within that article (including the actual interview with CliffyB), and all I see is him saying he doesn't understand how they rated GoW2 higher than GoW3. I'm not sure how that equats to asshole. Is there something I'm missing...perhaps some forum discussion where he elaborated on his thoughts and made an ass out of himself? To me it looks like people are blowing this way out of proportion.

I just got back from the US on Monday morning and, having the rest of the week off work, I've been catching up on the three big console shooters that were released while I was away (or immediately after my return); Gears 3, Space Marine and Resistance 3. So far, I've sunk about 3 hours into each of their campaign modes (maybe a little more into Space Marine) and it's been interesting to note some of the similarities and differences.

What really struck me about Gears 3 so far is the insane level of polish that's been applied. This isn't a game that has given any indications (so far) that it plans to do anything that Gears 2 didn't. Weapons, situations, characters and gameplay mechanics are all changed in only the tiniest and most subtle of ways. What's happened, however, is that each of them have received a few little tweaks and minor improvements. Whereas the first Gears of War felt like a really good idea in need of polishing, the third installment is all polish and no ideas. That's not really a criticism - this is an excellent game - just an acknowledgement of the limitations inherant in what Epic decided to do.

Space Marine, on the other hand, is trying really hard to throw some new ideas into the third person shooter space - or at least to do away with some of the recent conventions of the genre. There's no cover button - indeed the game generally seems to regard cover as for wusses. As befits the fiction it's based on, the correct playstyle seems to be based around near-rabid levels of aggression. There's some really neat stuff in there; the transitions between ranged and melee combat are flawless, the animations are excellent and it's nice to have intelligent, articulate characters in one of these games rather than the usual grunting troglodytes. That said, there are also problems; despite the aforementioned animation, the graphics are a bit basic in places. Worse, there isn't really much variety to the enemies and combat tends to feel quite samey - not helped by the generally imprecise feel of the ranged weapons.

And Resistance 3... if Resistance 3 had mouse and keyboard controls and a quicksave button, it would be an old-school PC shooter. Seriously - its an fps where the player character has a high movement speed, can carry as many weapons as he wants, has a health bar that doesn't regenerate until he grabs a health pack and umpteen ludicrous secondary fire modes. I love it. This is Insomniac at their insane best - rather than Insomniac trying to force themselves to be sensible (which ruined Resistance 2). If the game were on PC, it would be near perfect.

What's really amused me is the review scores controversy that Gears 3 has generated. I mean, you do expect fanboys to get upset over review scores for games which are strongly identified with a single platform (it's not just on the MS side - check out some of the Killzone 3 review comments). But CliffyB really does come over as a prize arsehole through those comments. Particularly since the Eurogamer review in question felt... well... perfectly fair to me.

Obviously, I can't score the games properly myself yet, having not finished any of them. But on the basis of what I've seen so far, I think I'd say that Space Marine is a 7, Gears 3 is an 8 and Resistance 3 is a 9. What playing all three games side by side has really brought out to me is how desperately the industry needs to shed some of the cliches that have dogged shooters in recent years. Gears 3 is the absolute embodiment of those cliches - 2 weapon limit, regenerating health, cover based combat - but it feels to me like that's about as far as that particular subgenre is going to evolve. I'd love to see a Space Marine sequel that brought some more polish to the first game's new ideas. And I'd really love it if more devs could follow in Insomniac's footsteps and allow themselves to just go crazy a bit.

Oh, don't get distracted by just this one piece of news when there's been so much more revealed!

Max 4 person multiplayer! Region locking for co-op games! No offline single player! No mod support what so ever!

Sure, this RMT auction house is the shitty icing on the shit cake, but lets not lose sight of the complete mess this game is going to be even without this feature.

Source: http://www.destructoid.com/preview-diablo-iii-beta-207543.phtml

We have better CPUs, better graphical capabilities, controllers, etc. Let's use them.

We don't necessarily have better controllers. The directional pad on even a worn Nintendo Entertainment System controller is far more precise than the miserable failure of a directional pad on an Xbox 360 controller.

P.S. The best way to boycott Sony is not buying their stuff. Buy a Wii instead. That's what I do. I won't be turning up in a Sony store tomorrow because I haven't cared about Sony for years.

Because Nintendo and Microsoft are so inclusive and accepting of crackers and users breaking their copy protection aren't they? Oh wait, no they're not different at all. Just 3 examples of many. I am not sure at all why Sony gets singled out for the hate.

"Sexy Apes on Rocket Bongos, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?" - you're right, that does sound kind of sexist.

No, wait, that's what she wrote. And all the comments appear to be sycophants sucking up to her.

I don't suppose you have any actual, I don't know, examples to show WTF you're talking about?

Note that calling her out as the attention whore she is isn't sexist, it's just honest.

...Sure, I still hate them out of habit, but I'm old and tired now. I feel like a bed-ridden, old and gray, Elmer Fudd who still mumbles that he "could have had that wascilly wabbit', but in reality doesn't really care and just wants you to leave him alone so he can watch Diagnosis Murder.

I'm sorry you've given up on your convictions. But you know, it's never too late to change your mind and decide to live your life. For starters, why not back off the "Diagnosis Murder" or at least try to watch only what you bother to record on your DVR. Then, when TV time is done, pick up something new & interesting to learn in the open source world. Spend some time at your local Linux Users Group. Have you revised your "short list" of reasons why Microsoft are a bunch of disgusting assholes? You may not be a gamer, but perhaps your friends & families deserve to know that (just like their software products), Microsoft also cranks out garbage hardware with 40%+ failure rates (see http://www.destructoid.com/new-survey-puts-xbox-360-failure-rate-at-42--171088.phtml). Give the history lessons of Stack Inc., "cutting off Netscape's air supply", the anti-trust case and the fact that before Outlook the whole notion of a virus being spread in an E-Mail as *LITERALLY* an old Internet joke.

I'm approaching 40 and I've been a software developer for almost 14 years now & fighting and hating Microsoft since I first laid my hands on an MCC Interim Linux distro on six 3.5" floppies in 1993 as I learned that there was better, more secure & more capable software in the world than DOS. I've learned a lot, built a career, and I'm not about to give Microsoft a pass to pollute the world with more crap, vicious business tricks & closed "standards" as they always have just because I'm starting to get tired.

"Old" is a state of mind, and once you decide to stop growing and learning you're going to be stuck there...

On-board processor was dropped [citation needed]

Here, here, here, and here.

Depth camera runs at 320x240 so it can't detect fingers? Maybe not, but it's doing infinitely more skeletal recognition than Move is.

Actually, Kinect only allows skeletal recognition for its own Avatars -- that functionality is not available to games developers. Both consoles are doing an equal amount of skeletal recognition in the SDK exposed to developers -- none.

Not ambitious? PS3 or PC could do the same thing trivially with two cameras? OK, then why aren't they?

Because, quite simply, everyone else knows it's not worth it. In fact, Sony was offered the Kinect technology and chose not to use it, specifically because they knew its marketability is limited.

Sony has already tried the no-controller camera-driven games with the EyeToy, which bombed. There have been all kinds of toy programs using webcams, which are all forgotten. Adding a depth camera does not fundamentally change the interaction -- in fact, it barely affects it at all. In userspace, Kinect is EyeToy, is doomed. You cannot play engaging games without a controller.

Overpriced? Perhaps, but I have a hard time believing that Microsoft is pricing it significantly higher than they have to - they want it to be a success and the know it's up against a less expensive competitor.

If they cannot sell two cameras and a toy motor for less than $150 I'll eat my hat. Do you really believe, for instance, that they "can't sell" a 250GB hard drive for less than $129.99 when normal 250GB hard drives can be had for less than $50 (a third of the price, ultimately)?

Basically, it sounds like you don't think they're going far enough, but I think if they went as far as you want them to they would completely price themselves out of the market. At some point you have to compromise ship something practical.

If I put a box of trash up on eBay for only a 10% markup over what it all cost me, how many people do you think will buy it? The market doesn't care what you spent. It cares what the price is and what they get out of it. $150 is going to sail right over everyone's head. You may bookmark this post and refer back to it when the Kinect line is officially discontinued (I will give it say Summer of 2012, after Microsoft loses a lot of money, which is what their games division has been doing all along.)

The source of this story was the Daily Mail, that also brought us such superb journalism as this.

My PC supports every major game that comes out...

Unless you're living under a rock, in complete denial of console gaming, or define "major game" as "this month's iteration of Call of Duty", I don't know how you can say that with a straight face. Not only can the PC simply not do some of the things the consoles can do (e.g. anything the Wii does), but so many of the big franchises are exclusive to a particular console. And with piracy on the rise, you start to hear stories such as this one about Super Street Fighter IV not coming to PC, despite the fact that Street Fighter IV made it. Don't get me wrong, PC gaming has been my bread-and-butter for years, and continues to be my preferred platform, but your statement was just blatantly ignorant of reality.

Here is Mario in Choose Your Own Adventure Format:

Choose Your Own Adventure World 1-1

To the readers of my comment: my point is that there's clear, reasonable evidence of the harms of piracy. But we're faced with a questioner who has an adversarial and unconvertible frame of mind.

Okay, let's look at Crysis. You say that Crysis sold fewer copies than previous games "of its scope." You cherry pick one of the most successful games of all time, Doom 3, but the most direct comparison is the one previous game produced by Crytek: Far Cry. Far Cry sold 730,000 copies in its first 4 months (http://www.wiki4games.com/Far_Cry#cite_note-1).

Crysis exceeded sales expectations according to EA, selling 1 million copies in its first 3.5 months (http://www.incrysis.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=612&Itemid=2), eliminating your argument. This came despite the fact that Crysis could barely run even on enthusiast PCs for a year after release, while Far Cry was released to a much larger audience of computers that could run it acceptably.

We know that Crysis was a very popular target of pirates, and Crytek tells us that this is proof that their sales were hurt by piracy, but there's absolutely no evidence connecting the two. Of every 100 downloads, how many would have purchased the game if they hadn't pirated it? Of every 100 downloads, how many see the game, like it, and then buy it in order to play online or out of respect for the developers? People like you assume that the first number is vastly larger than the second, but there's never been any evidence to support that position. I suggest that it's just as likely that piracy increases game sales, and I believe that the automatic assumption that piracy is the scourge claimed by some within the industry is incredibly naive.

Well, if we take a look at a game like World of Goo, which allowed users to access online portions of the game regardless of whether the copy was pirated or not, we can get a good figure, at least for this game. Since the ip address would be the same if someone pirated it and then liked it enough to buy it, and it was only available online, we can get a solid piracy figure. This figure, the estimated piracy rate, was 90% http://www.destructoid.com/wankers-world-of-goo-has-a-90-piracy-rate-111343.phtml. The two man team said they didn't go bankrupt, but to think they could have made so much more is surely proof of the damaging effect of piracy. Have they made a sequel or a new game I wonder. In this instance, beating someone to within an inch of their life and then saying its fine because they aren't dead is hardly a defense. It's clear that piracy hurts the little guys as much as the big guys like EA which we don't feel so bad about.

However not everything has improved, the Xbox360 Slim still scratches DVD just like the old one. I guess installing a few rubber pads would have been to complicated.

On the positive side there are rumors that the Dpad on the controller has been improved, however thats still a rumor and so far I haven't found photos of a disassembly of the controller.

Kinect can't reliably detect anything better than coarse limb movement, so no hand actions, sorry.

http://www.destructoid.com/sadly-scrapped-arkedo-s-natal-game-2-finger-heroes-161106.phtml

http://video.destructoid.com/#165121

Video and everything. Move it while it's on, and you ruin the disc. Not much of a surprise, but they could have fixed that.

Like the Sega Activator?

Bwahahah.. .Because we know how well online protest-group work...

That'd be "customers are customers and should be treated as such". That was more just a general commentary, though, rather than any claim to it being their specific claim on what their view is.

Well, I don't know. It looked differently in the comment: "they're happy to have no or minimal DRM because pirates could be customers and customers are customers and should be treated as such."

Someone said that music/film was more like niche games and that niche games were equally strong on inconveniencing the legitimate customer for the sake of delaying the pirates by a few hours or so.

Right. And that was another reason they weren't using DRM - because it gets broken.

As far as 2dBoy's and Stardocks opinions towards pirates, here's what they've said in the past:

"Demigod is heavily pirated," writes Stardock boss Brad Wardell. "And make no mistake, piracy pisses me off." "If you’re playing a pirated copy right now, if you’re one of those people on Hamachi or GameRanger playing a pirated copy and have been for more than a few days, then you should either buy it or accept that you’re a thief and quit rationalizing it any other way."
http://www.destructoid.com/demigod-dev-to-pirates-accept-you-re-a-thief-131731.phtml

"ricochet shipped with DRM, world of goo shipped without it, and there seems to be no difference in the outcomes. we can’t draw any conclusions based on two data points, but i’m hoping that others will release information about piracy rates so that everyone could see if DRM is the waste of time and money that we think it is."
http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/

I've seen 2d boy say elsewhere that they didn't think pirates bought games, so there was little point in trying to block or convert pirates.

My point being that, neither of them have a positive view towards pirates. 2dBoy is somewhat neutral - seeing them as non-actors in the whole system, and Wardell hating pirates, but seeing the futility of trying to stop them. Their reasons for not using DRM didn't have to do with seeing them as potential customers.

Valve has said some things in the past about seeing pirates as potential customers. Admittedly, they also use DRM, and I think their "pirates are potential customers" is way of creating a constructive attitude towards the whole thing, and shouldn't be seen as thinking well of pirates.

A recent interview has confirmed that BioShock 2 will be receiving downloadable content after it launches next month. According to 2K Marin's Kent Hudson, the studio is working on some "aggressive" DLC plans as we speak.

"Absolutely," says Hudson, when asked if DLC is coming. "We are working on pretty aggressive plans for DLC and that’s actually something that is already underway. That is something that is mostly being run out of the Marin studio because like I said the Australian studio is already ramping up on the next big thing."

So far, nothing has been detailed, so we've no idea what form this DLC may take. The original BioShock released a new difficulty level along with some brand new Plasmids. With BioShock 2 containing multiplayer and 2K Games ready to make as much cash as possible, who knows what treats are in store for our wallets?

He repeatedly called it DLC and said downloadable content. The implication is clear that you are purchasing content grabbed from a server and not an unlock code.

What reason would they have to cause this confusion other than to deceive people knowing full well they would not go for it.

You can debate what the $60 buys you when you purchase the game. That's fine and I'm fine with them selling unlock codes but they should have to be completely honest and at the very least no call it DLC because it is not.

I would consider deceptive advertising and, assuming this site can be considered a valid source then yes it is deceptive marketing: http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Deceptive+marketing

Elite came out in 1984, and was one of the first (if not THE first) truly open-ended game. So you would think the fifteen year gap between Elite III (Frontier: First Encounters) and now would be enough time for Braben to release The Outsider and get working on Elite 4.

Nope. That's why it's an inside joke in Oolite that Elite 4 is STILL coming soon!

Wrong.

From a previous post of mine: "Microsoft has an exclusivity deal with Netflix for the time being. Either due to technical or legal reasons, requiring the disc is a way to get around this. Considering Sony has already said the required disc is temporary, this implies the exclusivity deal is nearing its end. This also implies any disc required for the Wii would be temporary as well."

To add to this, it's also possible that since Silverlight is currently used for streaming except to the PS3, there is a technology issue. Streaming to PS3's currently uses the BD-Live protocol, hence the need for a disc. Once either the exclusivity deal runs out or they implement a different streaming solution for the PS3, the disc will be no longer needed.

I hate the four-letter words you mentioned as much as the next guy, but they aren't the cause of everything.

...Microsoft has an exclusivity deal with Netflix for the time being. Either due to technical or legal reasons, requiring the disc is a way to get around this. Considering Sony has already said the required disc is temporary, this implies the exclusivity deal is nearing its end. This also implies any disc required for the Wii would be temporary as well.

Calm down people. Jeebus.

Reminds me of when Sqeenix decided to shut down that Chrono Trigger fan game.