I can't even begin to describe how much I hate Mass Effect 2's PC-as-a-second-thought interface. Mind you, the game is awesome, the scope is epic, the story is fantastic, the sound and visuals are breathtaking and the characters are all "real" but the console-like controls drive me nuts.
The ME2 interface annoyed the crap out of me on the PC. I picked up Xpadder (http://www.xpadder.com/, $10) and plugged in a controller, which took a lot of the sting out it. I find the console style interface easier to live with - or at least less irritating - while using a console controller, and the keyboard and mouse were handy when I wanted them, too.
As a grammar pedant myself, I lovingly craft a carefully formed response and kindly request that you stop being so pretentious and go with what the dictionary says.
That's pretty much it... a little EQ and compression on it, maybe, and a touch of reverb for the mix. But it was recorded in 1951, and so it's not all that fabulous sounding. It gets used in the background, and you've heard it more times than you realize. A guy gets shot, or falls off a cliff... remember too that it's used in a flurry of other sound effects, dialog, and music. When the guy in the hockey puck costume is on fire and runs past the camera with the Wilhelm dubbed in, you aren't paying attention to him and you don't notice it. Unless you're an audio or film geek.
Hmm. Does the same "mens rea" apply to that law, or can someone arrange to flash a CP photo on a projector at the next session of parliament and throw the lot of them in jail for a fortnight?
Maybe in terms of usability (i don't know. never tried numbers) but it doesn't have a macro language.
Once I started using vba it opened up so many other ways of dealing with data. I'm surprised I'm defending a microsoft product but I think excel is one of their best.
Numbers has AppleScript and Automator support. I haven't played with it much, and I don't say that it's more or less than what VBA can do, but it's there.
I really doubt this is the case, but given Ubisoft's statement of "It may seem like the crack is working but its not" I wouldn't be surprised if the crack really does not work.
That would be the response either way. Though it would have been funny, accurate, and more surprising if the official Ubisoft line had been, "Shit!! My grandson TOLD me this was going to happen!!"
And the power plug for the laptop is kinda fragile for my liking.
Are you referring to that magnetic connection? It depends on the person, I think. I'm not much for it, but I've got a friend who RAVES about it, it's probably her favourite feature. She's tripping over the cord almost every time she gets up off the couch, and assumes - probably rightly - that it's saved her laptop some serious damage by now. Not owning one myself, I don't have an opinion of my own but I think it's a pretty clever design and it does fit into that "just works" ideal that Apple keeps presenting.
To all those who think Ubisoft should just let the pirates win... you have no idea how frustrating it is to spend many millions of dollars and several years of our life making a game, and then see statistics from our update servers that 15 to 20 people are playing pirated copies for every legitimately purchased copy. PC gamers have $2000+ computers and drop $200-500 on a video card every year. But most of them are too damn cheap to buy their games. They grew up pirating them through high school and university, and don't see any reason they should stop now. Most of them have managed to convince themselves that (somehow) they aren't doing anything wrong.
What is it about adding DRM that actually prevents me from playing your games that will make them NOT be too damn cheap to buy their games? I spend, hrrm... $400 dollars a year on games. More, if you include the games we buy two copies of so that we can both play, but it's about $400 on the games and copies that I play. None of that will be spent on Ubisioft games from now on. Not for the PC and not for any of my consoles, either. Because there's enough good games around that I'll barely miss the games I was looking forward to and if Ubisoft treats me like a criminal, they won't have me as a customer.
People say Ubisoft shouldn't treat them like criminals. But an unfortunately large majority of PC gamers ARE criminals who will steal any game they can, and justify it to themselves however they want.
Your customers aren't. Don't turn away your customers by trying to magically convert the pirates.
By the way, after the reactions to Spore and Bioshock (and a other heavily DRM-ed titles) we tried shipping the recent Prince of Persia without any DRM. Guess what? It was pirated heavily.. more so than any of the previous Prince of Persia games.
According to sales figures released by UbisoftPrince of Persia sold 2.2 million units in the first month of it's release. That quarter showed an increase in profits for Ubisoft from the same quarter the previous year, and the percentage of sales that came from PC sales was even with the previous year - not a drop. Dragon Age sold millions of copies without DRM, it's a hit.
So rather than give up on the PC market entirely (which is the other possible solution), we're trying the heavy DRM stuff. Some of those pirates (a small fraction probably) would buy a retail copy if they were not able to easily pirate the game. Most of them won't, and we don't care about those guys -- they can go pirate our competitors' games and thats fine.
I hope you're just as content that I can go buy your competitor's games - and that'll be fine
But after we spend 2+ years with hundreds of people working their ASSES off to make something just to entertain people, we would like them to pay us for it. Is it really so much to ask?/p>
Don't ask me, bub. I'm not a customer of yours, not anymore. Ubisoft clearly doesn't care about my business, with the way they expect to treat their customers, and I don't need them anymore than they need me. And what the fuck makes you think game programmers have cornered the market on hard work? I work hard too, and I'm not spending the money I worked my ASS off to entertain myself with on a company that thinks I'm a second class citizen for being a gamer.
Mine are like that - I watch movies with them I've already seen. They enjoy the movie - yes, I'd think it was ruined to watch a movie that way but they enjoy it. And I enjoy the time with them, since I'm not paying as much attention to the movie and can answer "Who's that guy? What'd I miss?" without missing the movie.Apparently they re-watch the ones they really like when I'm not around, and those times the movie isn't background to my visit - they settle down more, or pause/rewind the movie. When I have company, I don't pause the movie either.
Also, sometimes you can speed up a thing, get the story, but lose a lot by speeding up the pace. It depends a lot on what you're watching, but for some things the pace is as important as the dialogue. Other films are saved, or nearly so, by the time compression.
I'm a regular listener of Radio Paradise http://www.radioparadise.com/, largely because they'll often put songs after each other that sound great in sequence, but are of completely different genres. Independently owned, not what I'd call a college vibe.
Bonjour is a general method to discover services on a local area network. It is widely used throughout Mac OS X and allows users to set up a network without any configuration. Currently it is used by Mac OS X and on other operating systems to find printers and file-sharing servers. It is also used by iTunes to find shared music, iPhoto to find shared photos, iChat, Adobe Systems Creative Suite 3, Proteus, Adium, Fire, Pidgin, Skype, Vine Server, Elgato EyeTV to share local recordings with multiple clients, the Gizmo5 to find other users on the local network, TiVo Desktop to find digital video recorders and shared media libraries, SubEthaEdit and e to find document collaborators, Contactizer to find and share contacts, tasks, and events information, and OmniFocus to synchronize projects and tasks across the Mac desktop and the iPhone or iPod touch. It is used by Safari to find local web servers and configuration pages for local devices, and by Asterisk to advertise telephone services along with configuration parameters to VoIP phones and dialers. Software such as Bonjour Browser or iStumbler, both for Mac OS X, or Zeroconf Neighborhood Explorer for Windows, can be used to view all services declared by these applications. Apple's "Remote" application for iPhone and iPod Touch also uses Bonjour to establish connection to iTunes libraries via Wi-Fi.[2]
Google has never purchased a jumbo jet, and neither have it's founders.
The two founders bought a 767 back in 2005. They then had an argument over the kind of beds to put in it. Starting a post with a factual inaccuracy in a paragraph by itself isn't usually a good start.
It's not a factual inaccuracy. The Boeing 767 is a widebody jet, but not a jumbo.The photos immediately above, or a few seconds of fact checking, show the difference. The Google jet is a smaller 767, the 767-200. They bought it from Qantas airlines, who would have carried 180 passengers on it, and the Google refit can board 50. The Boeing 747 is a jumbo jet and can carry about 500 passengers because it is a significantly larger plane.
Not that I see anything evil in buying a plane, nor do I imagine that "do no evil" is often interpreted as more than "do no shit that I don't like". There is more than three words behind the motto. Not that anyone is interested.
You think it's more likely that a CEO made a moral choice? Don't make me laugh. If morals had anything to do with it, they would never have gotten into China in the first place.
They made a plausible argument that they had ethical and business reasons for wanting to be in China. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/02/testimony-internet-in-china.html You may not agree that they meant it, you may not agree with the merits of the argument, but it's reasonable to me to believe that they meant it. It's entirely possible and very common to make a moral choice and be entirely wrong, in hindsight. It's even reasonable to try something you think might not work out, just in case you're wrong about that. CEOs are human, too, and want to make money, sleep well, and love their friends and family as much as anyone else does.
To suggest that CEOs en masse have no morality is not sensible. A CEO can be compromised by his obligations to shareholders, that he may or may not be a complete asshole, or be so insulated from the real world by his position that choices might be made which you or I would deem immoral is entirely reasonable. Any of those I'd agree with, except when applied to every business executive, everywhere.
Is there anything Rogers gets right? Or are they currently the most abusive monopoly Canucks have to live with?
While I agree rogers sucks, they aren't a monopoly. Canada does have a problem with cell providers though. There has to be collusion between the cell companies, that's the only explanation for the ridiculous rates canadians have to put up with. I've had a cell phone since '98 and comparable plans have not gotten cheaper since then. I've been on all the major canadian carriers as well and while coverage is acceptable now it still sucks. Best coverage and cost I ever had was in Vancouver with Fido before they were bought out by Rogers.
"High speed" internet is the same thing. It costs the same as I was paying in the 90's and I had better bandwidth then (no upload speed caps, much more consistent DL speeds). If I want higher upload rates I now have to pay a premium for them to up the cap. Awesome.
Replace "abusive monopoly" with "corporate fucktards" and you've got a near-perfect sentence. I'd sooner go without than go with Rogers for any of their services. (Thank goodness I found TekSavvy!) Collusion isn't needed when competition is light, and so far competition has been light - and between two companies known for marketing on B.S. more than competitive pricing or services.
Heh. We're talking about gamers here. These are the same people who say that wireless controllers are too slow, that 5ms monitors are too slow, and that a 1-frame lag in Street Fighter 2 totally kills their game--even though all these things are all demonstrably quicker than their reflexes or visible acuity. Imagine how they'll react to something like OnLive?
Maybe we aren't talking about gamers - maybe we're we talking about people who play games. There's a lot of people who don't get that excited about games who might subscribe to such a service, if it's technically sound and has enough games. The other question, aside from the technical, is whether that kinda gamer market can be reached and appealed to. For me, it'd be a lot less than buying the games I want to play (although these days it's easy to find stacks of five dollar games), and so I might be a customer.
And there's nothing wrong with games like Guitar Hero. If I was willing to pay $100 for a fake guitar I would get it. The problem is that they're pushing this as something that should be used in all games. First person shooters, RPGs, platformers, racing games.. there are a lot of games that should not be using gimmicky controls like this, and if the Wii is a good indicator, all of them will anyway.
But one thing the Wii has shown - these "gimicky" controls can be used well. Some games on the Wii work very well with the controls. Some don't, but that's as more due to programming than the nature controls. There's enough on the Wiimote/Nunchuck combo that you've got a standard controller without using the motion sensitivity, if that's best for the game. I find the split control more comfortable to use than the XBox/PS3 one. And the push is not for all XBox games to be Natal controlled:
Microsoft’s Aaron Grenberg explained the plan for Project Natal in an interview with Joystiq: “Our focus is on most, if not all, [Project Natal] games falling into a category of completely unique, brand-new experiences.”
Greenberg said Microsoft did not simply want to tack Project Natal functionality onto pre-existing titles: “We’re not looking at just adding little Natal components to games, we’re looking at how [to] actually bring an entirely new category of controller-free games and entertainment to the market.”
They won't all be programmed for the Natal because the developers know that a lot of people aren't going to buy it. Which also means that many games that are programmed for it, won't require it. I'm looking forward to seeing what comes out for it. I don't know that I'll like it, but I'm curious enough to withhold judgement until then.
Chuck had a good ending, and it came back worse then ever.
Fixed that for you.
You write that as if your opinion is the standard for universal truth. I'm enjoying the third season, although the "reset" felt a bit kludgy. I particularly enjoyed the third episode and if they keep up with it, I'll enjoy the season. And now, NBC really needs shows of almost any popularity to fill the 10:00 p.m. slot.
To set aside all the geek bitching and snarking and for a better example, there's Mad Men. Every season has a solid ending that is also a good jumping off point for the next season, and the following season doesn't always follow the preceding immediately. Cliffhangers can be great for generating fan buzz, but a solid ending with potential for new stories can be just as good. And some games have been good at this as well, with stories or game universes you could revisit later in the timeline, or from another character's perspective, etc. If there's a trend towards the never-ending game story, there will eventually be a balancing towards stories that have endings too. Especially as the games market broadens, there are too many people in the potential market who want endings for the creators and publishers to ignore, and plenty of room for both ongoing and ending stories.
Slashdot Mirror
Therefore, "creative accounting" = "piracy performed in the accounting dept"
Bloody right - seen this? http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100708/02510310122.shtml - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix "lost" $167 million.
I can't even begin to describe how much I hate Mass Effect 2's PC-as-a-second-thought interface. Mind you, the game is awesome, the scope is epic, the story is fantastic, the sound and visuals are breathtaking and the characters are all "real" but the console-like controls drive me nuts.
The ME2 interface annoyed the crap out of me on the PC. I picked up Xpadder (http://www.xpadder.com/, $10) and plugged in a controller, which took a lot of the sting out it. I find the console style interface easier to live with - or at least less irritating - while using a console controller, and the keyboard and mouse were handy when I wanted them, too.
Well, I eat my hat.
Do that often enough, and you'll be passing hat genes to the kiddos.
He meant "rapid unicorn" - slow unicorn is gamey and chewy.
As a grammar pedant myself, I lovingly craft a carefully formed response and kindly request that you stop being so pretentious and go with what the dictionary says.
Main Entry: virus
Pronunciation: \v-rs\
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural viruses
You might like this: http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/plural-of-virus.html
Or a clever rebuttal.
Where may one obtain this free willy?
Believe me, it's not hard.
That's pretty much it ... a little EQ and compression on it, maybe, and a touch of reverb for the mix. But it was recorded in 1951, and so it's not all that fabulous sounding. It gets used in the background, and you've heard it more times than you realize. A guy gets shot, or falls off a cliff ... remember too that it's used in a flurry of other sound effects, dialog, and music. When the guy in the hockey puck costume is on fire and runs past the camera with the Wilhelm dubbed in, you aren't paying attention to him and you don't notice it. Unless you're an audio or film geek.
Here's a list of 149 films that have used the Wilhem: http://www.hollywoodlostandfound.net/wilhelm.html - with the expected links to the story behind the aaaah!
We just planted some, along with onions and corn.
Classic!
So the question remains, is he really discontent or just incontinent?
Discontinent.
Hmm. Does the same "mens rea" apply to that law, or can someone arrange to flash a CP photo on a projector at the next session of parliament and throw the lot of them in jail for a fortnight?
Oh great, another proroguing.
Maybe in terms of usability (i don't know. never tried numbers) but it doesn't have a macro language.
Once I started using vba it opened up so many other ways of dealing with data. I'm surprised I'm defending a microsoft product but I think excel is one of their best.
Numbers has AppleScript and Automator support. I haven't played with it much, and I don't say that it's more or less than what VBA can do, but it's there.
I really doubt this is the case, but given Ubisoft's statement of "It may seem like the crack is working but its not" I wouldn't be surprised if the crack really does not work.
That would be the response either way. Though it would have been funny, accurate, and more surprising if the official Ubisoft line had been, "Shit!! My grandson TOLD me this was going to happen!!"
And the power plug for the laptop is kinda fragile for my liking.
Are you referring to that magnetic connection? It depends on the person, I think. I'm not much for it, but I've got a friend who RAVES about it, it's probably her favourite feature. She's tripping over the cord almost every time she gets up off the couch, and assumes - probably rightly - that it's saved her laptop some serious damage by now. Not owning one myself, I don't have an opinion of my own but I think it's a pretty clever design and it does fit into that "just works" ideal that Apple keeps presenting.
To all those who think Ubisoft should just let the pirates win... you have no idea how frustrating it is to spend many millions of dollars and several years of our life making a game, and then see statistics from our update servers that 15 to 20 people are playing pirated copies for every legitimately purchased copy. PC gamers have $2000+ computers and drop $200-500 on a video card every year. But most of them are too damn cheap to buy their games. They grew up pirating them through high school and university, and don't see any reason they should stop now. Most of them have managed to convince themselves that (somehow) they aren't doing anything wrong.
What is it about adding DRM that actually prevents me from playing your games that will make them NOT be too damn cheap to buy their games? I spend, hrrm ... $400 dollars a year on games. More, if you include the games we buy two copies of so that we can both play, but it's about $400 on the games and copies that I play. None of that will be spent on Ubisioft games from now on. Not for the PC and not for any of my consoles, either. Because there's enough good games around that I'll barely miss the games I was looking forward to and if Ubisoft treats me like a criminal, they won't have me as a customer.
People say Ubisoft shouldn't treat them like criminals. But an unfortunately large majority of PC gamers ARE criminals who will steal any game they can, and justify it to themselves however they want.
Your customers aren't. Don't turn away your customers by trying to magically convert the pirates.
By the way, after the reactions to Spore and Bioshock (and a other heavily DRM-ed titles) we tried shipping the recent Prince of Persia without any DRM. Guess what? It was pirated heavily.. more so than any of the previous Prince of Persia games.
According to sales figures released by Ubisoft Prince of Persia sold 2.2 million units in the first month of it's release. That quarter showed an increase in profits for Ubisoft from the same quarter the previous year, and the percentage of sales that came from PC sales was even with the previous year - not a drop. Dragon Age sold millions of copies without DRM, it's a hit.
So rather than give up on the PC market entirely (which is the other possible solution), we're trying the heavy DRM stuff. Some of those pirates (a small fraction probably) would buy a retail copy if they were not able to easily pirate the game. Most of them won't, and we don't care about those guys -- they can go pirate our competitors' games and thats fine.
I hope you're just as content that I can go buy your competitor's games - and that'll be fine
But after we spend 2+ years with hundreds of people working their ASSES off to make something just to entertain people, we would like them to pay us for it. Is it really so much to ask?/p>
Don't ask me, bub. I'm not a customer of yours, not anymore. Ubisoft clearly doesn't care about my business, with the way they expect to treat their customers, and I don't need them anymore than they need me. And what the fuck makes you think game programmers have cornered the market on hard work? I work hard too, and I'm not spending the money I worked my ASS off to entertain myself with on a company that thinks I'm a second class citizen for being a gamer.
Mine are like that - I watch movies with them I've already seen. They enjoy the movie - yes, I'd think it was ruined to watch a movie that way but they enjoy it. And I enjoy the time with them, since I'm not paying as much attention to the movie and can answer "Who's that guy? What'd I miss?" without missing the movie.Apparently they re-watch the ones they really like when I'm not around, and those times the movie isn't background to my visit - they settle down more, or pause/rewind the movie. When I have company, I don't pause the movie either.
Also, sometimes you can speed up a thing, get the story, but lose a lot by speeding up the pace. It depends a lot on what you're watching, but for some things the pace is as important as the dialogue. Other films are saved, or nearly so, by the time compression.
I'm a regular listener of Radio Paradise http://www.radioparadise.com/, largely because they'll often put songs after each other that sound great in sequence, but are of completely different genres. Independently owned, not what I'd call a college vibe.
Who the hell modded that "funny"? It's either "informative" or "insightful".
The funniest stuff is both.
Other apps use and install the Bonjour service.
From Wikipedia:
Bonjour is a general method to discover services on a local area network. It is widely used throughout Mac OS X and allows users to set up a network without any configuration. Currently it is used by Mac OS X and on other operating systems to find printers and file-sharing servers. It is also used by iTunes to find shared music, iPhoto to find shared photos, iChat, Adobe Systems Creative Suite 3, Proteus, Adium, Fire, Pidgin, Skype, Vine Server, Elgato EyeTV to share local recordings with multiple clients, the Gizmo5 to find other users on the local network, TiVo Desktop to find digital video recorders and shared media libraries, SubEthaEdit and e to find document collaborators, Contactizer to find and share contacts, tasks, and events information, and OmniFocus to synchronize projects and tasks across the Mac desktop and the iPhone or iPod touch. It is used by Safari to find local web servers and configuration pages for local devices, and by Asterisk to advertise telephone services along with configuration parameters to VoIP phones and dialers. Software such as Bonjour Browser or iStumbler, both for Mac OS X, or Zeroconf Neighborhood Explorer for Windows, can be used to view all services declared by these applications. Apple's "Remote" application for iPhone and iPod Touch also uses Bonjour to establish connection to iTunes libraries via Wi-Fi.[2]
Google has never purchased a jumbo jet, and neither have it's founders.
The two founders bought a 767 back in 2005. They then had an argument over the kind of beds to put in it. Starting a post with a factual inaccuracy in a paragraph by itself isn't usually a good start.
It's not a factual inaccuracy. The Boeing 767 is a widebody jet, but not a jumbo.The photos immediately above, or a few seconds of fact checking, show the difference. The Google jet is a smaller 767, the 767-200. They bought it from Qantas airlines, who would have carried 180 passengers on it, and the Google refit can board 50. The Boeing 747 is a jumbo jet and can carry about 500 passengers because it is a significantly larger plane.
Not that I see anything evil in buying a plane, nor do I imagine that "do no evil" is often interpreted as more than "do no shit that I don't like". There is more than three words behind the motto. Not that anyone is interested.
You think it's more likely that a CEO made a moral choice? Don't make me laugh. If morals had anything to do with it, they would never have gotten into China in the first place.
They made a plausible argument that they had ethical and business reasons for wanting to be in China. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/02/testimony-internet-in-china.html You may not agree that they meant it, you may not agree with the merits of the argument, but it's reasonable to me to believe that they meant it. It's entirely possible and very common to make a moral choice and be entirely wrong, in hindsight. It's even reasonable to try something you think might not work out, just in case you're wrong about that. CEOs are human, too, and want to make money, sleep well, and love their friends and family as much as anyone else does.
To suggest that CEOs en masse have no morality is not sensible. A CEO can be compromised by his obligations to shareholders, that he may or may not be a complete asshole, or be so insulated from the real world by his position that choices might be made which you or I would deem immoral is entirely reasonable. Any of those I'd agree with, except when applied to every business executive, everywhere.
Is there anything Rogers gets right? Or are they currently the most abusive monopoly Canucks have to live with?
While I agree rogers sucks, they aren't a monopoly. Canada does have a problem with cell providers though. There has to be collusion between the cell companies, that's the only explanation for the ridiculous rates canadians have to put up with. I've had a cell phone since '98 and comparable plans have not gotten cheaper since then. I've been on all the major canadian carriers as well and while coverage is acceptable now it still sucks. Best coverage and cost I ever had was in Vancouver with Fido before they were bought out by Rogers. "High speed" internet is the same thing. It costs the same as I was paying in the 90's and I had better bandwidth then (no upload speed caps, much more consistent DL speeds). If I want higher upload rates I now have to pay a premium for them to up the cap. Awesome.
Replace "abusive monopoly" with "corporate fucktards" and you've got a near-perfect sentence. I'd sooner go without than go with Rogers for any of their services. (Thank goodness I found TekSavvy!) Collusion isn't needed when competition is light, and so far competition has been light - and between two companies known for marketing on B.S. more than competitive pricing or services.
Heh. We're talking about gamers here. These are the same people who say that wireless controllers are too slow, that 5ms monitors are too slow, and that a 1-frame lag in Street Fighter 2 totally kills their game--even though all these things are all demonstrably quicker than their reflexes or visible acuity. Imagine how they'll react to something like OnLive?
Maybe we aren't talking about gamers - maybe we're we talking about people who play games. There's a lot of people who don't get that excited about games who might subscribe to such a service, if it's technically sound and has enough games. The other question, aside from the technical, is whether that kinda gamer market can be reached and appealed to. For me, it'd be a lot less than buying the games I want to play (although these days it's easy to find stacks of five dollar games), and so I might be a customer.
And there's nothing wrong with games like Guitar Hero. If I was willing to pay $100 for a fake guitar I would get it. The problem is that they're pushing this as something that should be used in all games. First person shooters, RPGs, platformers, racing games.. there are a lot of games that should not be using gimmicky controls like this, and if the Wii is a good indicator, all of them will anyway.
But one thing the Wii has shown - these "gimicky" controls can be used well. Some games on the Wii work very well with the controls. Some don't, but that's as more due to programming than the nature controls. There's enough on the Wiimote/Nunchuck combo that you've got a standard controller without using the motion sensitivity, if that's best for the game. I find the split control more comfortable to use than the XBox/PS3 one. And the push is not for all XBox games to be Natal controlled:
Microsoft’s Aaron Grenberg explained the plan for Project Natal in an interview with Joystiq: “Our focus is on most, if not all, [Project Natal] games falling into a category of completely unique, brand-new experiences.”
Greenberg said Microsoft did not simply want to tack Project Natal functionality onto pre-existing titles: “We’re not looking at just adding little Natal components to games, we’re looking at how [to] actually bring an entirely new category of controller-free games and entertainment to the market.”
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/01/09/project-natal-focus-on-brand-new-experiences-not-little-natal/
They won't all be programmed for the Natal because the developers know that a lot of people aren't going to buy it. Which also means that many games that are programmed for it, won't require it. I'm looking forward to seeing what comes out for it. I don't know that I'll like it, but I'm curious enough to withhold judgement until then.
Chuck had a good ending, and it came back worse then ever.
Fixed that for you.
You write that as if your opinion is the standard for universal truth. I'm enjoying the third season, although the "reset" felt a bit kludgy. I particularly enjoyed the third episode and if they keep up with it, I'll enjoy the season. And now, NBC really needs shows of almost any popularity to fill the 10:00 p.m. slot.
To set aside all the geek bitching and snarking and for a better example, there's Mad Men. Every season has a solid ending that is also a good jumping off point for the next season, and the following season doesn't always follow the preceding immediately. Cliffhangers can be great for generating fan buzz, but a solid ending with potential for new stories can be just as good. And some games have been good at this as well, with stories or game universes you could revisit later in the timeline, or from another character's perspective, etc. If there's a trend towards the never-ending game story, there will eventually be a balancing towards stories that have endings too. Especially as the games market broadens, there are too many people in the potential market who want endings for the creators and publishers to ignore, and plenty of room for both ongoing and ending stories.