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Video games also stimulate the flight or fight response flight or fight response. This has been showed to improve the emotional state of the brain.

It would be conceivable that the right kind of educational pornography may help young men to be better lovers. Communication has been shown to be the number one issue with sex and emotional responses to sex. Some couples even find pornography as a stimulus or template for their own sex lives.

Enough research has been shown that video games help young men and women as they have hurting. My personal opinion is that the dangers vary from person to person and can not be generalized across a wide audience. As far as addiction? I am addicted to water, I love the stuff and it helps me to live! However even to much water can be deadly.

I'd like to see a fair comparison

here you go

The numbers of devices sold are not the only thing that you should look at in how successful a device is.

If Gamespot is to be believed, they lost about $126 per device. That will only be offset if those people sign up for gold membership or pay for something else on the side.

The win for Microsoft in these cases, is probably about getting into the living room in the first place. In this case, it doesn't lose influence in vital areas of the everyday users life.

Here ya go.

Anita faked her death threats.

I haven't bought a sony product since the playstation 2 demo CD that trashed memory cards. http://www.gamespot.com/articl...

the linked comment is super cool, but unsourced. However, it has a ring of truth for me. the comment calls out several nvidia technologies like TXAA and SMAA. It was the second time today I heard those terms. The first was when watching a gamestop video where an designer talks about all the cool tech that makes far cry 4 so pretty on the compuper. "Together with NVIDIA, Ubisoft has been working to incorporate GAMEWORKS technologies to add visual enhancements for the PC version of the game." LINK

What about before PS2 (and I would include PS3 too), when advanced 3D visuals like atmospheric effects and dynamic lighting (remember that Splinter Cell was released in 2002, just about 5 years before PS3 made dynamic lighting possible for console games) would have been impossible on consoles?

Ummm, the first Splinter Cells was on the PS2. Who says the PS2 couldn't do dynamic lighting?

http://www.gamespot.com/articl...

On the mobile front, Linux is already being avenged by the mighty Android.

But NOT for gaming. Sure there's cheap puzzle games and F2P IAP crap, but if you want "good" mobile gaming you need a mobile console like the 3DS and Vita.

They claim to have crowds of 30k NPCs: http://www.gamespot.com/articl...

TFA just mentions the interview without a clear reference to it. Looking for it I found two other articles that suggest that the 900p resolution and 30fps targets came from other factors. http://www.gamespot.com/articl... says that 30fps is "more cinematic" and 60fps "looked really wierd." http://www.gamespot.com/articl... suggests that some non-graphic computation is going on the GPU, but also has a quote that mentions "technically CPU bound."

What we don't know from these articles is why some or more of the AI computation can't be done in the GPU.

TFA just mentions the interview without a clear reference to it. Looking for it I found two other articles that suggest that the 900p resolution and 30fps targets came from other factors. http://www.gamespot.com/articl... says that 30fps is "more cinematic" and 60fps "looked really wierd." http://www.gamespot.com/articl... suggests that some non-graphic computation is going on the GPU, but also has a quote that mentions "technically CPU bound."

What we don't know from these articles is why some or more of the AI computation can't be done in the GPU.

> It's not about attacking women, that's a ploy.

Then they should find a new ploy because the attacks on women are really making it look like it is about attacking women.
If there is some other message in there, they should concentrate on that.

This is at least a $100m loss, likely closer to $200m-$250m

I was so wrong thinking a game like this requires only 50 developers. Here's what they spent/used for WoW:

Austin GDC 2009: Frank Pearce explains what it takes to craft 7,650 quests, 70,000 spells, 40,000 NPCs, 1.5 million assets, and 5.5 million lines of code; some 4,000 employees, 13,250 server blades, and 75,000 CPU cores keep MMORPG running.

http://www.gamespot.com/articl...

Considering Minecraft has sold over 54 million copies, a few million which are on PC and OSX, yeah, people STILL use Java.

Can you explain the "fundamental" changes that happen in these games?

In single-player Tetris since 2001, infinite spin and playing forever made score attack trivial, and Ryan Davis of GameSpot wrote of infinite spin that "it actually breaks Tetris". It ended up changing the most common single-player game format to time to complete 40 lines. In multiplayer, the rules on when a T-Spin sends extra garbage to the other player have fluctuated ever since the rotation rules were revised in Tetris Worlds .

"candy crush clone"

http://m.tickld.com/x/i-cant-b...
http://www.gamespot.com/articl...

The problem is separating the clones from the originals.

Wow, I hadn't thought about that in years! Got another laugh at its expense, thanks for the reminder. Big Rigs Over the Road Racing.

> Can anyone really tell much above 30 fps?

Oh please. There is a MAJOR difference between gaming at 30 Hz, 60 Hz, and 120 Hz. I play most of my games at 60 Hz and can tell _instantly_ when a game drops to 30 Hz.

This is NOT limited to games.

OWE my eyes @ 24 fps !

Silky smooth @ 60 fps !

If you don't have a 120 Hz monitor and haven't tried LightBoost then you really don't even know what the hell you are talking about saying "30 fps is 'good enough'."

Some game devs are completely ignorant of the importance of 60 Hz.
* http://kotaku.com/5393106/inso...

Thankfully some game devs DO understand the importance of 60 Hz.
* http://www.gamespot.com/articl...

Please go read up on Temporal Anti-Aliasing if you don't understand why movies can get away with built in Motion Blur.

All controllers are wireless, so I don't see why they should even have USB ports on the consoles anymore. I think the only real use of the USB slots was for the network dongle, and they could have put an actual Ethernet port in there for the same price.

You forgot need a USB keyboard for situations where online chat is a must. Think RPGs like FF11. It had PC and Final Fantasy ONLINE RPGs like Console gamers together IIRC. To get around keyboardless consoles, they had a rudimentary chat system where menus offer pre-defined things similar to "Hello" and "Let's team" and probably "Run". The optional keyboard and mouse input surely beats a 10 button PS gamepad. *

You may not be the target market. Nintendo has a long track record of supporting accessories (pre-USB): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nintendo_Entertainment_System_accessories
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wii_accessories
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NES_Four_Score
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multitap

Japan had a Satellaview game distribution system that used satellites and had exclusive releases like BS Zelda) and the little-known real sequel to Chrono Trigger (Chrono Cross was based on it)

If you don't think they can be useful, think Voice Chat (wikipedia says it's popular with sports games):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii_Speak#Compatible_games
It *requires* wired USB connections unless you have the new Wii U gamepads.

* I recall the API in my PS2 tests that Final Fantasy X listens to USB keyboard input whereever you can set custom names for your party members. You'd be surprised to learn that Japan's GUI for name input in the same game is more nuanced. Choosing from even their simplified non-Kanji alphabets (2 with 40+ characters) means you have a lot of tabs instead of the standard 26 Latin letters. I wonder if a USB keyboard lets them type the Kanjis directly.

But you didn't get ripped off and thats not what happened.

Did the original kick starters get what they paid for? (Dev units I expect?) If so, how did they get ripped off?

It's not what they're saying.

But some others agrees with you, namelly Nicholas Negroponte.

Let's see what time has to say about it.

Kickstarter is not an investment website, its a donation website. Not really sure how they got ripped off other than you don't like Facebook (me either!)

Yes and no. People does donate with something in mind. And they want this state of mind enforced.

You don't donate money to homeless if they're going to buy booze, do you? Most of us don't donate money to them even if we're sure they're going to buy food. Why?

With Kickstart it's the same thing. The guys can be right under the Law, but they have to face the public opinion about the matter. Kickstarters are feeling ripped off, and since they were the very simple reason Oculus managed to get a 2 Billion USD company, it's God Damned Good to spend a good fraction of this money trying to explain themselves - and perhaps, giving something interesting back to these guys.

Bad P/R can be good just to politicians.

uh, the kickstarters didn't buy stock, they donated money. they got exactly what they payed for.

It's not what they're saying.

Paradoxically, I'd probably quit if WoW became free-to-play, but limited until you paid

In that case, you should have got out in mid-2011 when World of Warcraft became free to play up to level 20.

I thought the Dark Tetrad Troll was Alexey Pajitnov, creator of the popular video game Tetris, when he broke the game in 2001 with the "infinite spin" rule change and went on to claim publicly that free software licensing destroys the software market.

I do not confuse copyright. I literally think it's used to control information, give people ability to censor and take information down, and make it hard to get by either not selling it or by requiring payment first.

An example of copyright being used for censorship is the videos on YouTube. People made recordings of videogames, usually their own gameplay, because who doesn't like to keep videos and show the world what it's like when they play it? OR some people made reviews and/or put it together in a "podcast"/online little show they did. But copyright came into play, and despite that this may in fact be a fair use at least, YouTube was taking down gobs and gobs of videos, and even I myself got a threatening copyright notice for a video I recorded of myself playing "Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing": http://www.gamespot.com/articl...

Purely retarded shit, and some people say the copyright infringement notices were sent out because the videos may have even showed the game in poor light and made people not want to buy it, like a bad review. But who gives a fuck because that's the way the ball rolls, even if it were true.

The deal is, I sort of think all information should be free, and copyright should be extremely limited, maybe to the original product only and only for 10 years. I believe in content archival, people not owning information (even a book or video or software is knowledge and information). I believe all content if it exists should be open and available for people to experience, without stupid laws that prevent it (which is what copyright is). It also conflicts with personal liberty, because it gives the copyright holder the right to tell the individual what they can and cannot do .. which I am totally against. ...

Following the link in the summary I discover that EA is being slapped around for delivering bad products at unreasonable costs (before their rating inflation scam). I was surprised.

I though it might be because of their proven history of abusive labor practices. Oh well, EA management apparently only respects the Almighty Dollar.

IA labs made actual products similar to wii-fit and met with Nintendo to discuss making Wii accessories using their technology at about the time the 3DS was to be released. IA then found out that Nintendo made the accessories themselves, apparently "stealing the ideas" that IA presented to them. So that's not what we'd normally call a patent troll.

I agree. Based on this article, Interactive Labs held the original patents and made products based on those patents. iA Labs acquired the patents later, then sued Nintendo with them. I think this was actually a defensive measure by Interactive Labs.

On April 2(2010), IA Labs filed suit against Nintendo in the United States District Court of Maryland. The suit claims that Nintendo has willfully infringed upon IA Labs patents with Wii Fit, Wii Fit Plus, and the Wii Balance Board, as well as the Wii Remote, Wii Nunchuk, Wii MotionPlus, Wii Wheel, and Wii Zapper. The company acquired the aforementioned patents in 2009 from Interaction Labs.

The fitness-technology company claims that the patents have been used in a number of products in the past. As detailed in the filing, Interaction Labs released the Kilowatt Sport and Exer-Station, both of which add a workout element to "any off-the-shelf video game on the PlayStation, Xbox, GameCube, or PC."

Both the patents and the products based on those patents were created by Interaction Labs. Interaction Labs held discussions with Nintendo in 2007 and 2008. iA Labs acquired the patents in 2009 and then sued Nintendo in 2010. iA Labs doesn't seem to have actually produced anything. One interesting thing to note is the following:

The suit also notes that then-Interaction Labs president and current IA Labs chief technology officer Greg Merril contacted Nintendo on a number of occasions in 2007 and 2008, through personal meetings and via e-mail. However, Merril's attempt to enter into a licensing agreement with Nintendo ultimately resulted in the publisher ceasing contact in late 2008.

One possibility is that iA Labs may have been spun off by Interactive Labs solely for the purpose of protecting the rest of Interactive Labs from an outcome like this.

In a similar vein, there is a Gamespot.com comparison of the Steam Box price versus the retail prices of the parts:

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/steam-machine-teardown-reveals-1300-price-for-components/1100-6416814/

"The sum of the system's various components--including its processor, motherboard, and hard drive--came out to around $1300. The most expensive component was its Zotac GeForce GTX 780 3GB video card--estimated at more than $500. It's important to note that the 300 Steam Machine units available today for beta testers are prototype systems. Specifications, and thus price, could change before the system launches publicly in 2014. It's also important to remember that several boxes will be available, featuring an array of specifications and price points. We've asked Valve to comment on the $1300 price point, but haven't heard back."

The Steam Box, a Gabe Newell subsidized bargain or will they just minimize profit as can be done to gain traction? Newell vs Jobs, I sense a difference.

(BTW, I still think Apple sucks, even if I have to admit the new Mac Pro design is nice.)

Because the state guaranteed the transaction occurred with neither party killing the other

Last time I purchased something in California... I do not recall there being a bomb proof barrier between me and the sales person that had been built by the state.

Yet, unless you arranged the purchase over Craigslist and met the seller in a bad part of town (in which case you're probably not paying any taxes anyway), law enforcement and regulation from the state and federal government has helped ensure that the clerk at the convenience store is not going to hit you over the head with a baseball bat and take your money, and you can walk into a huge big-box store and not worry that the roof is going to fall on your head - but if something like that does happen, then you'll be relying on government to find and punish that sales clerk, or to dig you out of the rubble from the store after a freak snowstorm made the roof collapse

In some countries you may pay less (or no taxes), but can't count on the general freedom and safety that we rely on every day as we go about our lives.

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."

Care to cite an example for your second statement?

If Steam wants to keep its safe harbor from copyright infringement lawsuits, it'll need to quickly pull any unauthorized derivative of Urban Terror after receiving a notice of claimed infringement from the Urban Terror team.

Remember when the early XBOX sales looks so bad they thought it might drag Microsoft under?

Except the early Xbox sales where great. From a 2001 article http://uk.gamespot.com/news/microsoft-reports-strong-xbox-sales-2829778 "Xbox sold out as soon as we launched, and we're selling systems as fast as we can produce them. More than 100,000 units a week are being delivered to retailers, so game players are likely to find Xbox systems throughout the holiday season. With one of the best launch lineups ever, I understand why Xbox is the most sought-after gift for the holiday." "

Not sure why people are trying to rewrite history.

Xbox 360 failure rate 23.7%, PS3 10%, Wii 2.7% - Study

Though it would be far from flawless, such a feature would be useful due to this incident http://www.gamespot.com/news/texas-teen-jailed-after-league-of-legends-argument-6410871

No really, http://au.gamespot.com/left-4-dead-2/videos/gabe-newell-behind-left-4-dead-2-and-beyond-interview-6238431/ Watch it at around 3:30.

There's also this picture http://www.ardemk.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Boycott-Modern-Warfare-2.jpg

Wasn't this the same guy that killed single-player only games from EA?

Not quite - it was EA Labels president Frank Gibeau

"I have not green lit one game to be developed as a single-player experience," Gibeau said. "Today, all of our games include online applications and digital services that make them live 24/7/365."

http://www.gamespot.com/news/no-single-player-only-games-ea-labels-boss-6394663

SimCity was the tipping point.

Remember, EA was recently ranked as the Worst Company in America. Gamers have been complaining about EA way before SimCity. Like when EA negotiated an exclusive rights deal on all NFL games and then churned out the worst NFL games for years and years to come. They have ruined many, many franchises.

...between reality emulating film and reality converging on film. The former is something that should generally be avoided when it comes to cinematic user interfaces, given that most of them are designed for cinematic effect, rather than usability. On the flip side, there's nothing wrong with the latter taking place if it just so happens that better usability corresponds to something that's shown up in films (or books, or any other form of media) already. We see this sort of thing happen on a regular basis with sci-fi media inspiring ideas that have value in the real world.

The touchscreens we've been seeing the last few years were in direct response to issues that existed with older-style smartphones, namely that the apps were cramped on a small screen, most of the buttons were useless for a good part of the time, and without relying on specialty buttons, we had to rely on multi-purposing some buttons for additional uses. By making the buttons virtual, the apps themselves become more useful since they can occupy the entire surface of the device, the buttons become more useful because they can visually change to become appropriate for the state in which the app currently resides, and far less irrelevant or extraneous interface shows up on-screen at any given time, thus putting the focus where it belongs.

As the summary mentions (I can't be bothered to read the article, of course), the change to touchscreens did come with some drawbacks, particularly when it comes to haptic feedback, but most of those can be addressed with various advances in technology and engineering.

So, yes, we have some catching up to do to achieve everything we had before, but in the meantime we've gained something more important: smartphones that live up to their name.

You must of missed all the news for the past month. "Guns" are the new "terrorism".

Not real guns mind you...they are perfectly fine, it's the fake guns that are a problem.

If the marketing had been better, it would've crushed. Believe it or not, ppl need to play a game before deciding it's 'too wordy'. The sale comes first, then the 'boredom'.

To whit: "It's clearly the best traditional computer role-playing game of the year and is bound to be an all-time favorite for many of its inevitable fans." ( http://www.gamespot.com/planescape-torment/ )

Nothing wrong with the game, bro.

As late as 2005, Microsoft was eating a $126/unit loss per XBox 360 (just the unit, not peripherals, controllers, etc): http://www.gamespot.com/news/microsoft-taking-126-hit-per-xbox-360-6140383 iSupply priced $470 to build each unit based on teardown and accounting for scale.

$126 x 66m units through January 2012? $8.3 billion so far if it were a constant, but we know that MSFT reported profits sometime in late 2010, so we use the cumulative numbers for 2010... call it 46m, and allow for slop in MSFT's favor to account for shifting in both directions (pricier early on, cheaper later on), and we get $5.7 billion loss so far. Add the RROD fiasco, which Microsoft says lost them over $1bn more, and we come to around $7 billion bucks in unpaid money sunk, just for the 360. So far, it's only been a couple of years, and unless someone can point to where Microsoft has made $7 billion in XBox profits over the past three years (let alone whatever they lost in the pre-360 XBoxes), my point is easily made.

HTH a little. It's back-of-the-envelope, but I favored MSFT heavily in the whole thing to make it fair.

Looked around, and it looks like they went anywhere from $30-$80.
http://www.gamespot.com/forums/topic/26803548

The definition of Tetris changed in 2001 with the introduction of infinite spin (explanation) and T-spin triples (explanation), among other changes that "actually break[] Tetris" according to a review by Ryan Davis of GameSpot. So have you been playing old Tetris or modern Tetris for the past decade?

* Even more so since Notch is effectively writing them a blank check for their next game, Psychonauts 2

I hadn't heard anything about Psychonauts 2, so googled it. Apparently it's not actually the next game, and not positively on track at all.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/psychonauts-2-pledge-made-semi-jokingly-minecraft-creator-6350572

I'm a big fan of the original, even though I'm stuck on the last level. (It's so frustrating that I try it then give up for months..)

tetris DS does get to the point where the piece lands nearly as soon as it appears

This behavior is called 20G, and it's also seen in "Death" mode of Tetris the Grand Master 2 and "Shirase" mode of Tetris the Grand Master 3.

however you can keep it from fixing to the stack by rotating it and wiggling it constantly.

This infinite spin behavior has become the standard since 2001, despite reviewers' assertions that "it actually breaks Tetris".

most of the games on the shelf now don't.

You going to back that up? Of course not, like pretty much everything you've said so far, it's completely baseless and unfounded

Of the top 15 PC games according to Gamespot, all of which were released this past 6 months, the following support Windows XP:

• Batman: Arkham City
• L.A. Noire
• Skyrim
• FIFA 12
• LIMBO
• Anno 2070
• Trine 2
• Saints Row: The Third
• Minecraft
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
• NBA 2K12
• Bastion
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution
• Fallout: New Vegas

The following games do not support Windows XP

• Battlefield 3

Funny, that's about the only game I can find that doesn't support Windows XP. Seems to me if MS was strong-arming game devs to only support Windows 7 there would be a lot more.

I think at this point it's pretty clear your little conspiracy theory is a complete fairy tale. Come back with some evidence or an actual sound argument instead of hot air.

Of course CD Projekt Red reported having 20-25% more piracy (4.5m) for their major title of the year (Witcher 2) than either Call of Duty or Crysis 2
    * http://www.gamespot.com/news/the-witcher-2-pirated-45-million-times-cd-projekt-6346876

If those numbers are correct, I have to wonder where the Witcher 2 devs got their figures.

"We were fortunate to be among the first in the world to see the E3 demonstration of the next game from the maker of Max Payne: the psychological horror action title, Alan Wake."

http://www.gamespot.com/alan-wake/previews/alan-wake-e3-2005-impressions-6125494

That is soon seven years in the making.

Battlespace has a wide margin.

http://www.gamespot.com/pages/profile/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=23916169&user=skektek

So terribly slow. I mean, look, this Blu-Ray drive is only 4x where this DVD is 12x!

Blu-ray 4x: 144MBps / 18MBps
12x DVD: 66 - 132Mbps / 8.2 - 16.5MBps

I mean, who would want the drive that's not running like a turbo jet to stream data to the device.

Is this really the case? I'm sure I heard that 3DS sales were looking pretty good

Yeah, here it is: http://uk.gamespot.com/news/3ds-sales-on-track-to-best-ds-first-year-in-us-6345402

3DS first-year sales in the US may overtake the DS; 250,000 Wiis sold in the past year. And Skyward Sword rumoured to be the best Zelda game yet.

Not too sure they're "sliding" anywhere!

People who previously owned UMDs were allowed to download free copies of their games from PSN.

Actually, due to "legal and technical reasons" this never happened.