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Gaming's Biggest Blunders of 2006
Ground Glass writes "After all of the self-awarding that goes on in the games industry this year, it's nice to be reminded that there were actually some pretty big industry disasters in 2006. Who can forget that timeless Gizmondo car crash story, for example? Or the onset of microtransactions for cheat codes? One of the Curmudgeon Gamers, Matt Matthews, lays out the worst the industry had to offer this year, from game hype to journalistic screwups, and everything in between." From the article: "3. Bill of Rights -- Void Where Prohibited by Law. We should also sit back and enjoy a steaming hot cup of schadenfreude at the expense of those tireless defenders of morality and the souls of our children: the state governments of Michigan, Minnesota, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and of course Illinois. Each has passed a law restricting the sales of videogames, and each has been stopped by the courts. Apparently there are things called 'constitutions; which grant 'rights' like 'free speech' which 'activist judges' are using to strike down the very laws which will protect our children from rock and r...videogames." He also offers up some of the cut content that didn't make it into the final article.
Is "World of Warcraft Expansion missing Christmas 2006" one of the items listed there?
Nah, because it'll sell like hotcakes no matter when it's released. Sad, but true.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
How exactly would not releasing a product that isn't ready for release be a blunder? If only more companies would spend time fixing their software instead of throwing it at the market for the holiday rush. Releasing unfinished games is a blunder, not the other way around.
Eugh. I saw the pictures from that accident. The Ferrari had 9 miles on it. Nine. One of those miles was the crash itself. My inner manly-man is crying just remembering those pictures.
It would have been a much bigger blunder if it'd be released early. I am in beta, seen it myself, and you can look on beta forums yourself, the new content was NOT READY by the end of November.
Somewhere, Darwin is smiling.
I think #3 should have made top marks on this one. The fact that my tax dollar payed for this political clap trap infuriates me. As much as I love Chicago, the rest of the state can take a flying leap.
PS3 being #1 makes sense ...
...
Last year at this time everyone was bashing how poor the XBox 360 launch and how expensive it turned out, many people even said "Why would you spend $400 on an XBox 360 when you can buy the more powerful PS3 (that comes with a Blu-Ray player) for less?"
It's amazing how much change 12 months can bring
Neverwinter Nights 2
Frag 'em all...
I also enjoyed GameSpot's coverage ( Dubious Honors 2006 ). If anyone's keeping track, the biggest "loser" this year was EA who was mentioned several times in both articles. I'd have to agree. Next year, everyone can get their hand on whatever hardware they want. Bad games will stay bad and be lost to history. But we're still going to be dealing with overuse of in-game ads and microtransactions for in-game cheats thanks to EA.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Looks like Mario and Luigi may have to pay this gentleman a friendly visit.
The enemies of Democracy are
Killing off E3 T_T.
The controllers are not defective. PEBWAC.
Let's get drunk and delete production data!
Yes, as I was about to say :
From TFA:
"7. Nintendo Says 'when hand gets sweaty, simply wipe 'em'
The Nintendo Wii, current darling of the videogame press, has a dark side...
It's really inexcusable. If your commercials show beautiful people thrashing about in the throes of videogame ecstasy, you have to expect that consumers are going to want to do the same. But those models in your commercials are trained professionals working in a controlled environment. As soon as you take that lethal Wii remote out into the Real World, accidents are possible, even likely. "
Yes, Nintendo made a huge blunder by showing professionals using their console. We all made the same mistake: we assumed these were professional models and/or actors. In reality, they were professional "hold'er-on'er"s, who had abundant professional experience which allowed them to maintain a grasp, however tenuous, on the wiimote, instead of letting go like blithering retar... I mean, your average user.
No disclaimer Nintendo? For shame.
Uh no, why? Because those who were going to buy it or get it as a gift will still get it in January 07. Parents will get it for their children regardless.
Hell a lady here at work bought her sons each a 32" LCD and she mentioned World of Warcraft as the primary reason for it. (granted she got them at brand smart) but still...
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Ummm... there was nothing defective about the controller at all. First, it was the strap (which I don't even use and have yet to break my TV). Second, the original strap was fine for normal people, the new version is basically the strap for dummies.
Let's not forget how Sony Slammed Microsoft for botching a World wide launch (despite MS shipping greater numbers and actually making it world wide), and how they also Slammed the Wii for being 'just a gimmick' before adding tilt functions into their controller. I wonder how Sony's investors, (and executives) keep being "overly optimistic".
I speak for the general public when I say that it's probably a good thing you aren't an engineer or manager. From the consumer's perspective (the only one that counts), the strap IS part of the controller because it came with the controller.
Again, if you're developing for consumers, you need to assume that a significant portion of your buyers will be dummies. Smart companies spend time testing their products in "dummy" sitations precisely for this reason: to figure out what bad things can happen when consumers use their products in a way other than was originally intended around a theoretical white board.
Kudos to Nintendo for trying to fix their fuck-up, but it was a fuck-up, and one that could have been avoided with a better "beta" program.
A good comparison was brought up in an earlier newspost.
Do manufacturers of footballs or baseballs hold the liability when their product goes through a window or tossed into someone's face?
The wiimote is not designed to be thrown. When the wiimote is thrown, the strap can break, resulting in harm or damage.
Kitchens knives are not designed to be thrown, cause much more hard they are thrown, and don't even come with a wrist strap!
" Smart companies spend time testing their products in "dummy" sitations precisely for this reason: to figure out what bad things can happen when consumers use their products in a way other than was originally intended around a theoretical white board."
Only a dummy would throw knives around the house, but the product is not safeguarded against this. Are knife manufacturers now responsible for all harm caused by throwing steak knives within the home?
It was nice of them to include a wrist strap, but if they hadn't included one no one would blame the lack of one on losing their grip on the remote.
I should note that I don't own any nintendo products past the N64.
Again, if you're developing for consumers, you need to assume that a significant portion of your buyers will be dummies. Smart companies spend time testing their products in "dummy" sitations precisely for this reason: to figure out what bad things can happen when consumers use their products in a way other than was originally intended around a theoretical white board.
...
Kudos to Nintendo for trying to fix their fuck-up, but it was a fuck-up, and one that could have been avoided with a better "beta" program.
Honestly, this is something a testing program would never catch
The strap only breaks when adults (one would assume reasonably large or athletic men) push the limits beyond what most people would feel comfortable with; when someone is testing something for a company (in particular if they are watched testing something) they react to it like it was glass. The limitations of the strap could only be tested by morons who will treat a $40 controller like it was a $2 toy they got with their happy meal.
Yeah, it's pretty funny to watch everyone defend Nintendo here. If this were any other company except Apple, people would be laughing out loud at Nintendo. It's crazy that you already have 7 responses defending Nintendo as it being the user's fault. If it's a widespread issue and the federal government is getting involved, then there obviously is a problem.
The comments on wiihaveaproblem.com are also getting quite cute as well.
I speak for the general public when I say that it's probably a good thing you aren't an engineer or manager. From the consumer's perspective (the only one that counts), the strap IS part of the controller because it came with the controller.
As an engineer, I'm going to have to counter this by saying that when used as designed, the Wii wrist straps function perfectly fine. Even in the videos of "professionals" "flailing in video game ecstacy", they aren't swinging their arms around as fast as possible. In my opinion the original straps were fine but Wii Sports should have integrated more splash screens with reminders to use smooth steady motions and NOT swing your arm as hard as possible.
You'd think common sense would come into play in cases like this, but then again, this is the country where they have to put warning labels on lawn mowers telling you to not reach underneath it while its running in order to pick it up and use it to trim your hedges.
Sorry, but if a 7-year old kid can swing the controller hard enough to lose her grip, snap the strap, and still nail the TV hard enough to damage the screen, there's something wrong.
It would be one thing if the Wii wasn't intended for children. However, even Nintendo's demo kiosks show happy smiling children and adults swinging their arms with enough force to chuck the remote across the room.
And even if there wasn't a problem, why did Nintendo release the Wii in Europe with a much thicker lanyard compared to the US and Japan?
The only thing that keeps this from being a continuing comedy of errors is the fact that Nintendo has bowed to public pressure and is offering free, stronger, wrist straps to all customers. Hopefully this will end the problem.
I'm not defending nintendo for any reason beyond the FACT that a double standard is being applied here. No other product needs to be safeguarded against idiotic usage. The strap is in the same vein as a dead-man switch on a chainsaw or lawnmower (aside from the obvious difference in scale), but abuse of the strap is the same as abuse of that dead man switch. If you duct tape the dead man switch on your riding mower in the active position, and then you get mauled by the while working on it, (like an idiot), the manufacturer is not liable.
If you lose your grip on the wiimote, the strap will prevent your from dropping it and potentially breaking it. If you throw the wiimote, (improper usage), the strap will also stop it. If you throw it really, really hard, (really, really improper usage) the strap may break, and whatever you threw it at may also become broken.
People, this is like putting "Warning, may contain nuts." on a jar of nuts. AND THEN getting sued because someone ate them anyway, and had a mild allergic reaction.
What's the deal with this title? It was supposed to be out in April, then August, then November, and now Amazon has April 2007 as the release date. I have a strong personal interest in seeing this title since I was the lead tester for the first Backyard Baseball GC (2004). That was a fun title since the developer tried to sneak in various phallic symbols and the middle finger into a kids game. Does Atari/Infogrames only have enough money to release one title at a time?
Overpriced console, selling in small quantities, with relatively few games.... Unless Sony does something quickly, they could have a disaster of 3DO-like proportions. I'd say that if they've managed to solve their manufacturing problems, they need to churn those suckers out and cut the price to at least match the 360.
Even though they've missed the holiday season, for the sake of 3rd parties, they need to get more PS3s into consumer hands asap. Even the large 3rd parties can only sit on unsold PS3 games and the loss they entail, for so long. Also, during the holiday season, many may be willing to spend more for something like a console, but once that period has passed and sanity sets in, the high price of the PS3 is going to prove to be a formidable barrier.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
That's basically my point. "Used as designed" is insufficient and the result of poor planning; consumers rarely use products exactly "as designed."
Last year's #5? Nintendo's Revolution's big thing was being a Gamecube with a motion-sensing controller. In 2005, derided for being underpowered and gimmicky. ... yeah, looks like that -really- screwed up Nintendo there. They made a terrible mistake, making a system that out-sold the PS3 (Yeah, yeah, they had more available... still counts!).
Makes me wonder, at the end of 2007, which item from this list will we look back on and say, "Y'know, that really wasn't a bad thing..."
Blizzard might be in a different position, but most video game companies (like most retail operations) live or die on the Christmas sales. That's why so many games are released unfinished just before the holidays.
Maybe it's a good thing it didn't come out before Christmas 2006, so that WoW players don't have as much of an excuse for avoiding interaction with their family on Christmas day.
If there wasn't a strap, no one would be expecting it to prevent the controller from colliding with breakable things! People would have to rely on their own SELF RESTRAINT to do it. However, since the strap is there and it has broken on a few dozen occasions, people blame a faulty product. Who will blame Louisville Slugger if one of their bats gets thrown, and maims an onlooker?
Only misuse could result in that scenario. Guess what, the same misuse is occuring here.
You may be surprised, but I completely agree with you here. They may have had fewer throwing incidents if people didn't think there was a strap to keep them from losing complete control of the remote.
A better other-product analogy to use here rather than footballs and knives would be a railing on a staircase that appeared to be attached but really was not. In this case the appearance of security was there, but not the reality.
I have the wii console; it still amazes me that someone could break the strap that comes with the controller. It looks and feels just as strong as the one on my digital camera. I've never let go of the controller myself, nor has any one of the approximately two dozen people who have tried the system since I bought it. My wife did smack our television once while playing tennis, but she was just too close to the screen and neither the TV nor the controller sustained any real damage.
I'd be willing to bet that the people who broke the strap were angry at missing a shot or something similar, and actively tried to throw the controller in frustration. To that end, I don't care how foolproof you try to design something. Fools will still find a way to exceed design parameters. More interesting might be the fact that the controllers in the stories I've heard still function, despite being thrown at these sort of velocities.
GPL: Free as in will
Sorry, but if a 7-year old kid can swing the controller hard enough to lose her grip, snap the strap, and still nail the TV hard enough to damage the screen, there's something wrong.
... then again, if you produce a TV that can't withstand the force of a 7 year old throwing something at the screen should you be held accountable? After all a moronic 7 year old might throw the remote at the screen ...
I haven't read about a case like this
It would be one thing if the Wii wasn't intended for children. However, even Nintendo's demo kiosks show happy smiling children and adults swinging their arms with enough force to chuck the remote across the room.
So, since I see comercials of happy adults and children eating potato chips it is the manufacturers fault that I eat 2Kg of chips a day and become 400 lbs?
And even if there wasn't a problem, why did Nintendo release the Wii in Europe with a much thicker lanyard compared to the US and Japan?
Who knows why they changed, maybe the new strap is less fray resistent or maybe their supplier could no longer supply the larger strap. The reason they replaced the strap was because there were reports of people breaking their TVs and Nintendo wanted to limit their liability by ensuring that the only excuse for this ever happening was that the user disregarded their warning screen and didn't have their wrist strap attached.
Mod Parent UP!
I had the same thoughts, if last year's were proved to be so wrong in such a stunning example, what "problems" won't be next year?
Is "World of Warcraft Expansion missing Christmas 2006" one of the items listed there?
RTFA.
Well the class action might get to the bottom of this, if it ever makes it to court. It does look as though Nintendo doesn't have too much of a problem here though. If people decide to throw Wiimote, contrary to the instructions Nintendo print in the manual, then they only have themselves to blame. The number of people coming up with copycat issues looks like people circling to try and get something out of Nintendo for free. The way that the Wii is selling it doesn't look to be too much of a problem to me.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
Oblivion.
Not because it wasn't a beautiful game. It was.
But, sadly, I never completed the main quest line. An NPC bugged out on me and I could find no console commands to fix it. Add to that I had no recent saved games I could continue from and I just gave up entirely.
I do plan to go back and play it through again.. Maybe soon. I might even get that Knights of the Nine add-on.
TLF
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
"If [Stefan Eriksson] hadn't crushed the hopes and dreams of dozens of Gizmondo fans worldwide, we'd almost say we need more -- not fewer -- of his type in the industry."
Errrr.....no. This guy was a member of the Uppsala mafia. Before they got into business fraud, they went around threatening to kill peoples' family members (including children) unless they paid money owed. This guy and his friends are the worst kind of psychopaths and I hope he rots in jail for a looong time.
The gaming industry doesn't need more of his type. In fact, one of the greatest advances of humanity would be if we could find out how to get fewer of his type.
It depends on what the strap was designed to do.
The important thing is that no one has said that the strap is designed to act as a retainer for a thrown controller. An even more apt analogy, in my opinion, is an everyday belt. It is designed to keep pants on, by supporting their weight and the weight of whatever is in the pockets. Nowhere does it say that it cannot be used as a climbing harness, though some belts might appear to be sturdy enough to use as such. However, misusing it in such a way might result in a fall, but the belt manufacturer would not be held liable though the belt gave a false sense of security.
Sometimes I think I ought to charge for the wisdom I dispense on SlashDot, but here's another free look into the real world:
When you do real consumer product testing, you don't ever tell the truth about what you are testing for. For example, you may heard about the "TV pilot" tests where they ask you to watch a bunch of new shows they are considering airing on TV. However, they are also showing you commercials and at the end they test you for retention of information shown in the commercials (what they really care about) in addition to what shows you would most like to see in the coming year (these results are tossed).
Nintendo (or any other console company) could get honest feedback about its products by setting up similar situations where the evaluators were told "you are going to evaluate snack treats" or a particular video game or something else and the console itself would just be part of the experience as far as the evaluators were concerned. It would also have been fairly cheap for Nintendo to send demo units home with trained employees and let Cousin Larry and the kids beat up on those units for a while.
Once again, it has to be said that a Venn diagram showing "morons" and "console game players" would have a large overlapping area. Nintendo should have expected this, especially when it started pitching to "casual" gamers.
You're close, but still missing it. The key isn't what is was "designed to do" in the theoretical world by a bunch of eggheads, but what consumers expect it to do when they see it in the real world.
To extend my "railing" example further, you could design a decorative railing held on with Scotch tape if it was designed for only a light wind load, but you'd still be liable if you decided to install that decorative railing on a staircase where people would expect a real railing.
The limitations of the strap could only be tested by morons who will treat a $40 controller like it was a $2 toy they got with their happy meal.
:)
It's the job of a good QA department to somehow manage to round up just such morons.
...with a Pinto were "amazed" when they found out it could burst into flames after being rear-ended. It doesn't mean it couldn't have happened, it means it hadn't happened to them, that's all.
Testing includes verifying how a product performs within limits, and also beyond. After all, someone has to define what the limits are in the first place. And then what happens if someone goes slightly beyond it. I am certain Nintendo did many tests on the limitations of the strap, and its breaking point. Unfortunately, whatever assumptions they originally made were off.
If I had to guess, culture differences may be the reason. If they did much of their usability testing in Japan, then folks there may be less apt to "be retarded" in their swings, than many of the gamers here in the US. Although I'd also have to agree with a lot of folks and say that Nintendo is partially to blame for that behavior, since their own kiosk demos in the US appear to demonstrate that you can, and should actually swing the Wii-mote with the same force as you would a tennis racket or golf club.
-- jchenx
You're being far too vague. I don't think my car insurance would pay for damages if I used my car as a projectile in a strange, experimental game of darts. Obviously the car wasn't designed for this kind of use, but by your logic the car company should have been prepared for any and all uses beyond specifications.
That's somewhat unfair of me, despite your vagueness you're probably trying to make the point that Nintendo should have accounted for the fact that people were not necessarily going to use the Wii exactly as they should. That's a valid point, but that's exactly what they did.
The strap is there to account for a high probability Nintendo foresaw in flying Wiimotes. Being a more physically active console, and given that gamers already can get sweaty hands sitting almost comatose in front of a TV, the strap goes beyond "Used as designed" and accounts for gamers who will lose control of themselves and the Wiimote in the excitement of the game.
However, if you read Nintendo's statements regarding this you'll see that their testing did not predict the excessive amounts of force that some gamers have been putting into their pitches and swings. When I say excessive, I mean excessive because of the amount of duress it takes to break the strap. See this link for more detail.
Given the huge amount of force the original takes to break, I don't think we can really blame Nintendo for implementing a safety device that in all but the most extreme uses functions perfectly well.
Barring actual defects in some of the straps, I have to call this one for Nintendo.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
You can claim it's part of the controller if you want, but it's really not. No more than the strap on a camera or any other portable device. The controller, which is used to control the Wii, works perfectly fine for its purpose.
Second, keep in mind that most of this is likely HIGHLY sensationalized. We probably have a tiny handful of idiots around the country that actually broke the strap, but the pictures of broken HDTVs makes for exciting press pieces. I guarantee you that some people will still manage to break the new strap. A company should only be expected to do so much to protect the idiots from themselves. What do you want? Handcuffs?
Sort of. X was a real rating, along with G, M, and R as the original MPAA ratings list. "Midnight Cowboy" was rated X, for example. According the good ol' Wikipedia, X was dropped in favour of NC-17 because X wasn't trademarked, and became associated with porn. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPAA_film_rating_syst em
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
With World of Warcraft as hot as it is? Nah... holiday sells don't mean shit for them now. Heck, they could probably drop StarCraft and Diablo titles completely and focus on WoW for the next 5+ years and still be "in the black".
Seriously, WTF? An average rating of 56.9% for the PC. The 360 version looks slightly more promising with an average rating of 78%. I may just pick it up as a rental.
Christmas sales don't matter for WOW because most players don't know what day it is anyway.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Well, unreleasing an unfinished product isn't in itself a blunder.
But not meeting deadlines, especially important, well hyped ones is a blunder, imo.
So no, I wouldn't want them to release it unfinished. I would have preferred them to finish it on time, however.
Where is the support for the real hard core gamers. The ones that run linux?
If you can't hang on to a controller or control your ADHD then that's your fault not Nintendo.
You know what? I could get pissed off and throw my PS2 controller at my TV and have the same affect. It would be just as equally my fault for being a dumbass and letting it go. I should have controlled my anger such as a Wii user should control there hyperactivity.
Thrashing?? No the people in the commercials are controlling themselves. There not playing EXTREEM BALLS TO THE WALL BOWLING!!! Where the point of the game is to chunk a 6 lb. ball in hopes of taking out the back wall.
It's not Nintendo's responsibility to keep people from being stupid.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
What do you mean, don't know what day it is? It's Onyxia reset day!
Does this mean I can sue beer companies when I go drinking, hit-on women and get slapped?
...
No, but you can sue them when you go to a bar, drink their beer, and don't get hit on by women just for drinking their brand of beer.
Same goes for Wii users - if you treat it as a weapon, what do you expect it to do? I can't wait to see the first version of Star Wars: Light Saber Arena Combat for the Wii - going to be a lot of funny YouTube videos for that one
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
How about when used as instructed in all of the manuals for the both the system and the games (which perfectly matches how they are designed)? The instructions do make it pretty clear you should hang onto the controller and use smooth controlled motions.
Seriously, Don't take anything I say seriously.
Anyone releasing anything that could remotely compete with World of Warcraft. Which is anything. So basically everything.
Mario GTA -- sorry, you will need a youtube login to watch this one.
Robot Chicken is quite amusing!
http://www.kotaku.com/assets/resources/2006/12/wii cuffs.jpg
Done and done.
Actually, Nintendo's biggest F*up was to include a strap in the first place. If they didn't include a strap, the blame would be on the user of the remote for letting go. Because they included a strap, and display numerous 'safety' messages that you should use it, it makes people feel that it's Nintendo's fault should they let go, at unrealistic motion speeds, and the strap doesn't hold.
I agree with the person who said that it was probably someone who got angry at the system and through the remote, thinking the strap would prevent it from going anywhere. I know that in my NES, GENISIS, SNES, and N64 days, I threw and smashed my fair of controllers on the ground due to frustration. I wouldn't even doubt you could find people who broke their TV's back then with controllers. They're just blaming Nintendo because they don't want to fess up to their parents that they have temper problems, broke the TV out of frustration, and would be punished for doing so (like getting their Nintendo taken away from them.)
Cheers,
Fozzy
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
Just read the Ubi forums to see how bad it is (of course, the forums seem to be down right now--go figure).
The subcription revenue from WoW alone is greater than the GDP of several third-world nations. Missing a holiday release for an expansion won't even register as a blip to Blizzard. Blizzard has developed a reputation of releasing titles "when they're ready". The result is having a quality product on release day (which always, invariably breaks all existing game sales records).
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
As if having your law struck down by a [Gavel of Infinite Wisdom] weren't shame enough...
I believe I recall this being a +2 Holy weapon.
Either way I want it. There are a few choice lawyer I think could use a good bit of... motivation.
I don't have a microwave. I do, however, have a clock that occasionally cooks shit.
As I understand it, as of December 2006, no major U.S. retail chain will sell unrated video games or video games rated by organizations other than the ESRB, and local governments sponsor the major retail chains' oligopoly through preferential zoning treatment.
So do I: pot was banned in order to ban hemp in favor of petroleum and synthetics.
but I don't believe in age controlled substance.Due to the extreme neoteny of H. sapiens among animals, some parts of its brain do not finish developing until between the ages of 18 and 21 years. Some chemicals and depictions affect incomplete brains much more than they affect complete brains.
To be pedantic, actually my belt does have a large disclaimer saying "Not Intended for Climbing". Yes, its silly, but true.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
So maybe you can put together a decent set-top PC for 600 USD. But will it have a large library of native games that are designed specifically for set-top play? Are there any party favorites similar to Bomberman and Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. Melee that allow four players to use four USB gamepads connected to one PC? Or do you have to buy four set-top PCs for four players?
The PLAYSTATION 3 console plays well over 90 percent of PlayStation and PlayStation 2 games, allowing converts from the Xbox and GameCube systems to choose from hundreds of by now value-priced titles while waiting for the PS3 killer app. It's like buying a $370 console and getting a $130 PS2 free. Did the 3DO console play any previous console's games or any previous home computer's games?
I've not heard that. However, that case isn't much different than movie theaters refusing to book NC-17 movies. It is censorship by proxy which we in the USA have tons of.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Ack, I just posted with this point before I read this comment. I would have put it under here if I had read it here first.
Not a bad attempt at an analogy. However, I think this analogy would be best stated like this...
"An attached railing worked for those who grab it with one hand and walked down some stairs, but broke when a 180 pound man tried to sit on it or slid down it."
In this case, railings where designed for people to hold with their hands and even put some body weight on it. Some thick railings (banisters) are capable of holding the weight of an adult to slide down. If one railing would support your weight to slide down, it does not mean all railings can. Even if a railing can support your weight, it does not mean you should slide down one, because it is dangerous to do so; you can fall off and bump your head.
Even so, people and kids will use railings and bannister's to slide down. Some kids will even stupidly try to do it (like myself as a kid) on a railing that cannot support their weight. They will break the railing and maybe even damage something else such as the wall, furniture or themselves. Is it the railing manufacturers fault the kid used the railing in such a way? Or, lets put it this way... How much fault is a railing manufacturer responsible for should they design a product that can be used inappropriately?
Of course, they could have designed the railing to be 'un-slidable', or make it stronger with supports. Yet, I cannot see a vast majority of parents blaming the railing company for the accident, but rather the child's actions. I can see the children turning to their invisible monsters and lair to their parents stating that it was someone else who broke it, to deflect blame.
This would be my case in point, from my previous post. Also, it's been stated that the broken TV phenomenon is over-hyped, and lets run some numbers...
On Nov. 28th, PC World reported that some 600,000 Wii's where sold, with Nintendo estimates to hit 4 million by the end of the year. It's also been reported that the sales numbers are off as much as 20% (less) for that 4 million mark. So, we'll just use the 600,00 Wii number. We'll also use an average of 2 Wii remotes sold per console (everyone will have one, while others can have up to 4). That's 1.2 million remotes out there. Wiihaveaproblem.com is stating that there has been a total number of Wii remote damages of about 40 destroyed objects (including TV's, laptops, PDA's, Walls, Wii's, and more) and they only list 29 broken straps (I guess the other causes of damage where people not even using the strap), but we'll just use 40 as a conservative estimate.
That's an incident rate of 0.0025%. Hardly what I call a problem and should clearly show that these incidences are the exception, rather than the normal and that the cause for these accidents are not the fault of the system, but the user of that system due to the fact that if it was a system design flaw, there would be significantly higher rates. Now, Wiihaveaproblem.com would hardly justify as an accurate site, but even if it is off, it would have to be off by 400 times that amount to reach 1%. Also, the sales number of remotes and systems continues to climb at the same ti
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
Sony billed the PS2 as the beginning of the SDTV era. Previous games for everything from the Atari 2600 to the original PlayStation console generally ran in LDTV resolutions of 240p (NTSC) or 288p (PAL). A few games for N64 and PS1 ran in 480i at the cost of frame rate (N64 Turok 2 and Perfect Dark) or detail (Tobal No. 1 and Ehrgeiz). Not until Dreamcast and PS2 did game consoles gain the ability to process more geometry and fill 640x240 fully lit, textured pixels 90 times a second[1].
[1] You need 90 fps in order to have enough headroom that the most complex scenes finish in 60 fps.
If you really were a hardcore gamer, you'd run windows due simply to the fact that games run in windows, and often windows alone.
Don't get me wrong, I would give anything to see MS's choke hold on the gaming industry broken. But right now, unless you can flawlessly emulate DX i/o it's not going to happen.
I was under the impression that that's exactly what they'd done...
Sigs are for the weak.
Might it have something to do with negotiations with 2K Sports, the exclusive license holder for MLB and MLBPA, or with Electronic Arts, the exclusive license holder for NCAA?
Your math is good up until you assume that even a minor percentage of wii accidents are reported to one particular little-known website.
If you're still doing Onyxia, you're not truly addicted (oh wait, you're gearing up your alts...).
a picture on link blog: rated 'F' by The Delaware Crossing Board. (May contain free speech.)
If you need text styles to communicate then you don't have a message.
18 slot bags, man. Need 5 for every toon. :D
That's 10 bags (don't forget the bank!) per character (unless you need some stuff like herb or enchanting bags or *gasp* a quiver....), 10 chars per server => 100 Ony bags. With about 10-15 peeps in the raid so slay Ony, that's 5*1500 days, or roughly 20 years to equip everyone with enough bags :-)
It seems easier to me to just grind those bags with the Argent Dawn. Or isn't that repeatable?
Ha! Imagine that. Well, let me rephrase: not all belts, or pants with beltloops, or whatever, have such a disclaimer.
I agree with you, which I included the comment that this Wii problem website is not going to be a reliably accurate portrayal of the incident amounts. However, this site does go beyond a 'little-known' website. It's been mentioned in a Reuters news article which gets published to various news outlets such as yahoo, Chicago Tribune, the New York Post, the Los Angeles Times, CNN Money, and the Washington Post not to mention the hordes of local newspapers, blogs, TV and Radio stations who reported on this topic and mentioned that website.
Suffice it to say, they're not 'little-known' when talking about the topic of Wii remote damages. However, I would believe that they don't have accurate data or methods to accurately report the data. Though, as I mentioned in my earlier post, it would have to be off by 400% to even reach 1%, which would be an amount at which I can start to see an actual product defect, rather than 'user defect', so to speak, hehe.
I'm sure there's a large margin of error on that math as it's just using basic estimates and takes in a lot of assumptions, but I think it does put this 'Wii remote damage' phenomenon into a better perspective of how it's more of a 'bizarre' news story than an actual consumer problem. It seems more like FUD than a creditable concern. I'd boldly state that not even Kevin Bacon can be connected to a case. =P hehe Of course, there's plenty of room for me to be wrong on this. =)
Cheers,
Fozzy
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
AD bag is unique.