I don't think you'd want to say that to the faces of Mike Vrabel, Willie McGinest and Richard Seymour. RS, in particular, might be injured now but he was a huge part of the Patriots' defense prior to this season.
Now, if we're talking secondary then, yes, apart from Rodney Harrison it's been a mess for quite a while.
First off, I should note that I have no problem at all with Nintendo's concept as far as letting people play old games goes. I think it's a great idea. My point was merely that it in no way has anything to do with backwards compatibility. Unless you can plug the original games (the backwards part) into the new system (the compatibility part), it's just a complete misuse of the term.
As for giving them away or selling them for a "negligible" price: Not a chance in hell. They can make as much noise about how they're doing it "for the people" as they want but if you're believing that malarky then I think you're engaging nostalgia more than your brain. If they give away, or sell dirt cheap, an old game that means less time on a new game, a new game that is dripping the tasty sauce of huge profit margin and, at minimum, usually needs to recoup its development cost. This concept also goes against what Nintendo has been doing for years now which is repackaging old properties and selling them for - or very near - full price.
I no more believe Nintendo on this topic than I would believe any game company a year or more before the launch of a new product or service...especially when they're being as vague as the quote you provided...
It is, if you're a) willing to pay launch prices for a game console (yuck) and b) willing to play currently compatible games now and wait to replay other games down the road. Microsoft has been adamant that the number of Xbox games which will work in the 360 is going to increase over time, and with games like Splinter Cell (and sequels) still on the "to-do list" they certainly have incentive to keep working on it.
My suggestion to folks really concerned about this issue is to look at the list of Xbox games that will work at launch and look at the Xbox 360 games that are coming out from launch to, say, the end of January. If those games can't hold you over for a year, then just don't buy an Xbox 360. The thing's going to be market for a long time and the only people who need to be in a rush are those that just have to have the newest, shiniest toy and those that want badly to start playing the Xbox 360 launch games.
Not at all. One of the big draws to game consoles is that (in theory) "they just work." You stick a game in and it starts right up - no fiddling with software settings or hardware configurations. If Microsoft opened things up as you described while knowing that a large number of Xbox games won't work at all, they'd be setting themselves up for a support/return nightmare from people who get an hour into their unlisted Xbox game of choice and the game crashes the system. In addition, locking unlisted games out allows them to have more control of their console as a whole, so that the hackers out there have a harder time modifying their boxes - every crash would be a potential opportunity for a modder to work some of that voodoo they do.
The Revolution will NOT be backwards compatible beyond the Gamecube - unless you think that they're going to include cartridge slots? Any games previous to Gamecube that are playable on the Revolution will be those that Nintendo decides to sell/rent/whatever from their online service. And they'll be played on what? Yes, software emulators.
"If somebody needs to keep their Xbox to play Xbox games because it won't play *all* their Xbox games, what's to stop this theoretical person from getting a PS3 or Revo instead?"
Nothing, but what's going to stop them from wanting an Xbox 360? The answer, of course, is the same one that's always true: People buy new videogame consoles to play new games. The only exceptions to this are the people who want all the new fancy stuff and, as always, those people are going to want ALL of the new fancy stuff.
Bottom line is that PS3 and Revolution aren't going to get huge exclusive sales from people who owned Xboxes and lots of games and are frustrated that not every one of their old games is playable on the Xbox 360. That person who really enjoyed the Xbox is still going to be that much more likely to buy an Xbox 360.
Are you looking at the Xbox Brand End Table or, perhaps, the new footstool advertising "Xbox Inside!"?
I know the Xbox is huge compared to the other two (soon, three) game consoles, but it can be handled by one person. As a bonus, it doesn't necessarily have to be hardwired into the power outlet and the TV.
Don't get me wrong. I'm aware of the problems with interlacing and I would have preferred it had no interlaced standard had ever been implemented in the ATSC standard. It would have been much better had 720p at 60 Hz been adopted as the mainstream standard (considering the progress of displays in terms of capability and price) with 1080p at 60 Hz available to ATSC in the upgrade path. But, that bridge has already been burned behind us.
That's pretty fucking deep. So, if a parents give their child an Xbox 360 they're shallow parental failures? Kids are kids and they like stuff. They've liked stuff since long before marketing campaigns. And, guess what? A parent can buy their kids a $400 toy and still be able to go play in the snow with them, though they might save themselves the sniffles if they play with them on a game console...
Ummm, 1080i is 1080 lines of content rendered at 60 fields (half-screens) per second. Just because they're not renedred in the manner you prefer doesn't mean the data don't exist.
I'll give you credit for the funny tone, but your note at the end makes your post a serious one in terms of your overall point, so I'll respond that way...
How many people actually have multiple cores (be they in single-processor or multi-processure units) in their home desktops? Given the prices, and the timeline in terms of availability, of dual-core CPUs right now, I'd figure it's not that many. How many of those people have more than 512MB of memory? Again, probably much fewer than you'd think when looking at the signatures of people posting on gaming boards.
By the time a large number of gamers have one or more of the "next-gen" gaming consoles in their homes, the folks playing PC games on dual-core CPUs, on 64-bit OSes with gigabyte ethernet home networks and 2GB or more of RAM will still be in the minority. And by the time those kinds of specs ARE the majority in home PCs, they still won't have the kind of gamer numbers that the X360, PS3 and Revolution will already have in place.
Even at $400 a pop, the Xbox 360 represents a tremendous value for the gaming power you get compared to the price you'd pay for something similar in the PC world, and it'll stay that way for at LEAST two more years (during which time, the price of the X360 will, of course, come down). Whether the games are good enough to make it truly worthwhile is open to debate (and I'm one of those who will likely wait until at least spring 2006), but the idea that anyone outside the power-gaming minority will have home PCs of similar capability anytime soon is ludicrous.
No, I really don't think Sony is trying to cater to publishers with this decision. That really doesn't make any sense considering that everyone from big ole EA to little ole Hypnotix (now a part of EA - sad) ended up making games for Xbox Live. While it's true that if publishers want to sell extras on Xbox Live they'll have to give a cut to Microsoft, it's far easier to make that happen on XBL because the framework is already there. Doing the same on the PS2 (and now, apparently, the PS3) requires building the infrastructure. While a company like EA has the resources to make that worthwhile, other companies have to go to a lot of extra trouble to make it happen, and so far the majority don't seem willing to do so.
Considering Sony did a lot of talking from the debut of Live up to last year about how they were going to build their own similar online service, it seems more likely that they just decided it was going to cost them too much money. The short version is that Sony sees 5-10% of Xbox owners subscribing to Live and decides that's a bad sign. Microsoft has looked at those same numbers and decided it could be the tip of the iceberg. I figure MS is probably in the right on this since people like multiplayer gaming and broadband numbers are going up instead of down.
As interiot pointed out, an external scaler would be a MUCH more elegant solution since it would a) be useful with all signals (if you truly are displaying 1080p, a good external box could probably even improve 1080i over your display's internals) and b) offer you better choices in terms of DVD playback. I would further wonder why someone who claims to have a 65" 1080p display (something that had to cost SERIOUS money) would even consider using a game console for DVD playback, upconverted or not.
Finally, why would you ever care? You say that you're using an HTPC so you already have upconverted DVD playback. Methinks someone just wants to take a cheap shot at the new console...
I'll play the pedantic geek here for a moment. I believe you're correct about alternate Leeta's orientation (it's been a while) but alternate Kira was less a lesbian and more a bisexual, hedonistic dominatrix - she went after males and females alike. For her it was all about using sex as a weapon/tool.
Beyond telling you that you come off as an old crank, I thought I'd note one small correction to your rant:
I stopped FPS when everything became a weak version of CS (Tom Clancy, Rainbow Six, ad naseum).
First, it's "Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (and Ghost Recon)," not two different things. Second, the first Rainbow Six for PC came out on 07/31/98 and Half-Life (forget about Counter-Strike) came out three months later. If either was a "clone" of the other, CS would be the copycat...
I haven't seen one in use, in person, either. I did, however, see John Leguizamo playing with one on ER last night, with actual gameplay closeups - Ridge Racer if I'm not mistaken. It didn't, however, inspire me to run out and get one.:)
Obviously the point of a Video ipod is to take entertainment with you to places you would not bother to lug a laptop.
You should probably be aware that grandparent's Dell Axim is a PDA (as he indicated late in the post) and not a laptop. Thus, one could presume that he "lugs" his Axim pretty much everywhere.:)
Just in case you're still sitting back and waiting, you need wait no longer. You're exactly right. DVDs are pressed/burned/recorded in a linear fashion, much like CDs. Once one layer is filled up, the second layer is then used. That's a slight over-simplification since, if you're recording less than 9.4GB (for a commercial DVD) but more than 4.7 GB, you might arrange the DVD in such a way that the second layer is used earlier, specifically to avoid, or at least minimize, the possibility of a layer-switch problem (which, by the way, has less to do with the DVD itself and more to do with the player - older players with smaller memory buffers have particular trouble with layer-switching).
No, actually, it's not a great idea. The whole concept (even apart from home burning) is stupid. I was only making the point that hard drives are not a prerequisite for recording cable/satellite/broadcast TV to DVD.
Oh wait. Standalone DVD recorders are already available that burn in real time without a hard drive. You might want to check out some of the new electronics that have been released over the past five years...
First off, I'll note that my anecdotal evidence is that I don't know anyone who uses a game console as a primary DVD player. At best, it might be used to play discs on a second television.
As to the next-gen, I won't deny that Blu-Ray will be a selling point for the PS3 (though, again, the playback quality needs to be a damn sight better than the red-pushing, out-of-synch experience I had with the PS2). My point is simply that people who will be considering an Xbox 360 before the PS3 comes out aren't going to be waiting for a PS3 for that reason alone. The fact is that people who buy consoles at or near launch ARE die-hard gamers who aren't going to be judging consoles based on some potential, but currently ephemeral, non-gaming advantage. I think this lesson was learned in spades from the Dreamcast debacle where it was a year before the PS2 provided a gaming experience nearly the quality of the GD-ROM-using DC.
Finally, I think you're wrong about HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players selling for a premium for a couple years. Not only are the manufacturers going to be competing in terms of the "format war" but they're going to be competing with "old school" DVD players as well. The manufacturers aren't going to have the luxury of waiting for the market to catch up because they'll want their particular format to have an advantage. DVD had that luxury because the only thing close to competition was Divx which was sold in one store chain (eventually making it to two, maybe three, as I remember my history), and even then Divx players could (and do) play DVD movies so each of those units sold was STILL another DVD player in terms of market penetration.
My undereducated prediction? The cheapest Blu-Ray/HD-DVD player (with DVD compatibility) will cost no more than $200 at launch and will be $150 within six months. Within two years (and maybe one), the manufacturing costs will be such that they'll stop making DVD-only players entirely and "next-gen" players will be at and under the $100 mark.
Very nice!:) Unfortunately, when I post on my work computer I'm stuck with IE6.0 and Slashcode isn't rendering the preview (which I usually rely upon heavily when posting) properly in that browsher...Of course, it's rendering very badly in Firefox, too, so I can't put all the blame on IE despite my hatred for it.
The idea that people are going to care about movie playing on this next generation of videogame consoles is ridiculous to me. The only reason people cared even a little bit at the time of the PS2's release was that DVD players still cost a bit more ($100-150 at the low end) and because there were so few decent (let alone good) games available for the system at launch. It was slightly easier to justify buying the $300 PS2 to play SSX since it could play DVD movies.
Today we have a situation where nearly everyone has a standalone DVD player, including the people who bought a PS2 with that purpose in mind (once they found out that the PS2 did a piss-poor job of playing DVDs or their PS2 crapped out on them). The only way it's going to matter in the "next-gen" console market over the next two years is if one of the new formats very rapidly develops an extensive catalog of movies, which will probably go slowly given production constraints and the need to continue supporting DVD. Even then, those who are interested are going to need a capable (DVI/HDMI) HDTV to take advantage.
There are good reasons to wait on buying a videogame console, the biggest being the high launch prices. Whether the system has DVD, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray or PR-DVD (People's Republic DVD) is at best a tertiary consideration.
No. Ultimate Spider-Man was in development at the same time as Spider-Man 2, though (obviously) the latter started development before the former. And, no. They were developed by separate teams AT Treyarch, though the USM team did work with the SM2 team. In other words, despite the implication in the review, USM is not a follow-up to SM2 except in a purely chronological sense.
1) Ultimate Spider-Man (VG) does not build on the "framework" of Spider-Man 2 (VG). It was in development before the latter even reached beta. They used some ideas from last year's game but it's a different team.
2) The plotline of "canon" Spider-Man goes back to Amazing Fantasy, not "Amazing Stories." Amazing Fantasy issue 15 for the even more anal out there.
3) Ultimate Spider-Man (the comic book) was created before the movies, let alone any "popular response" to them.
4) Mentioning Brian Michael Bendis (the writer of Ultimate Spider-Man) without mentioning Mark Bagley (the peniciller of Ultimate Spider-Man and another consultant on this videogame) is a crime against humanity, especially since the "distinctive" art style is mentioned.
I think the most likely reason they threw the book at him is that he showed ill intent in what he was doing, based in part on the fact that he lied to police when questioned. According to his [final] story he was - without the permission of the site's owners - testing their security by seeing if he could get to private information through an easy method. Just because it's really easy to do doesn't mean that it's a proper, or legal, procedure. The fact that he is a security consultant means that he should know the applicable laws and certainly should be someone who tells the truth when a police officer asks him a question.
If he was concerned, it would have been dead simple for him to contact the site owners and ask them some questions. Upon finding out they were legit, he could even have offered his services AS a security consultant to make sure their system was up to snuff. It's a shame that he decided to go the vigilante route.
Slashdot Mirror
Now, if we're talking secondary then, yes, apart from Rodney Harrison it's been a mess for quite a while.
First off, I should note that I have no problem at all with Nintendo's concept as far as letting people play old games goes. I think it's a great idea. My point was merely that it in no way has anything to do with backwards compatibility. Unless you can plug the original games (the backwards part) into the new system (the compatibility part), it's just a complete misuse of the term.
As for giving them away or selling them for a "negligible" price: Not a chance in hell. They can make as much noise about how they're doing it "for the people" as they want but if you're believing that malarky then I think you're engaging nostalgia more than your brain. If they give away, or sell dirt cheap, an old game that means less time on a new game, a new game that is dripping the tasty sauce of huge profit margin and, at minimum, usually needs to recoup its development cost. This concept also goes against what Nintendo has been doing for years now which is repackaging old properties and selling them for - or very near - full price.
I no more believe Nintendo on this topic than I would believe any game company a year or more before the launch of a new product or service...especially when they're being as vague as the quote you provided...
It is, if you're a) willing to pay launch prices for a game console (yuck) and b) willing to play currently compatible games now and wait to replay other games down the road. Microsoft has been adamant that the number of Xbox games which will work in the 360 is going to increase over time, and with games like Splinter Cell (and sequels) still on the "to-do list" they certainly have incentive to keep working on it.
My suggestion to folks really concerned about this issue is to look at the list of Xbox games that will work at launch and look at the Xbox 360 games that are coming out from launch to, say, the end of January. If those games can't hold you over for a year, then just don't buy an Xbox 360. The thing's going to be market for a long time and the only people who need to be in a rush are those that just have to have the newest, shiniest toy and those that want badly to start playing the Xbox 360 launch games.
Not at all. One of the big draws to game consoles is that (in theory) "they just work." You stick a game in and it starts right up - no fiddling with software settings or hardware configurations. If Microsoft opened things up as you described while knowing that a large number of Xbox games won't work at all, they'd be setting themselves up for a support/return nightmare from people who get an hour into their unlisted Xbox game of choice and the game crashes the system. In addition, locking unlisted games out allows them to have more control of their console as a whole, so that the hackers out there have a harder time modifying their boxes - every crash would be a potential opportunity for a modder to work some of that voodoo they do.
The Revolution will NOT be backwards compatible beyond the Gamecube - unless you think that they're going to include cartridge slots? Any games previous to Gamecube that are playable on the Revolution will be those that Nintendo decides to sell/rent/whatever from their online service. And they'll be played on what? Yes, software emulators.
"If somebody needs to keep their Xbox to play Xbox games because it won't play *all* their Xbox games, what's to stop this theoretical person from getting a PS3 or Revo instead?"
Nothing, but what's going to stop them from wanting an Xbox 360? The answer, of course, is the same one that's always true: People buy new videogame consoles to play new games. The only exceptions to this are the people who want all the new fancy stuff and, as always, those people are going to want ALL of the new fancy stuff.
Bottom line is that PS3 and Revolution aren't going to get huge exclusive sales from people who owned Xboxes and lots of games and are frustrated that not every one of their old games is playable on the Xbox 360. That person who really enjoyed the Xbox is still going to be that much more likely to buy an Xbox 360.
Are you looking at the Xbox Brand End Table or, perhaps, the new footstool advertising "Xbox Inside!"?
I know the Xbox is huge compared to the other two (soon, three) game consoles, but it can be handled by one person. As a bonus, it doesn't necessarily have to be hardwired into the power outlet and the TV.
Don't get me wrong. I'm aware of the problems with interlacing and I would have preferred it had no interlaced standard had ever been implemented in the ATSC standard. It would have been much better had 720p at 60 Hz been adopted as the mainstream standard (considering the progress of displays in terms of capability and price) with 1080p at 60 Hz available to ATSC in the upgrade path. But, that bridge has already been burned behind us.
That's pretty fucking deep. So, if a parents give their child an Xbox 360 they're shallow parental failures? Kids are kids and they like stuff. They've liked stuff since long before marketing campaigns. And, guess what? A parent can buy their kids a $400 toy and still be able to go play in the snow with them, though they might save themselves the sniffles if they play with them on a game console...
Ummm, 1080i is 1080 lines of content rendered at 60 fields (half-screens) per second. Just because they're not renedred in the manner you prefer doesn't mean the data don't exist.
I'll give you credit for the funny tone, but your note at the end makes your post a serious one in terms of your overall point, so I'll respond that way...
How many people actually have multiple cores (be they in single-processor or multi-processure units) in their home desktops? Given the prices, and the timeline in terms of availability, of dual-core CPUs right now, I'd figure it's not that many. How many of those people have more than 512MB of memory? Again, probably much fewer than you'd think when looking at the signatures of people posting on gaming boards.
By the time a large number of gamers have one or more of the "next-gen" gaming consoles in their homes, the folks playing PC games on dual-core CPUs, on 64-bit OSes with gigabyte ethernet home networks and 2GB or more of RAM will still be in the minority. And by the time those kinds of specs ARE the majority in home PCs, they still won't have the kind of gamer numbers that the X360, PS3 and Revolution will already have in place.
Even at $400 a pop, the Xbox 360 represents a tremendous value for the gaming power you get compared to the price you'd pay for something similar in the PC world, and it'll stay that way for at LEAST two more years (during which time, the price of the X360 will, of course, come down). Whether the games are good enough to make it truly worthwhile is open to debate (and I'm one of those who will likely wait until at least spring 2006), but the idea that anyone outside the power-gaming minority will have home PCs of similar capability anytime soon is ludicrous.
Considering Sony did a lot of talking from the debut of Live up to last year about how they were going to build their own similar online service, it seems more likely that they just decided it was going to cost them too much money. The short version is that Sony sees 5-10% of Xbox owners subscribing to Live and decides that's a bad sign. Microsoft has looked at those same numbers and decided it could be the tip of the iceberg. I figure MS is probably in the right on this since people like multiplayer gaming and broadband numbers are going up instead of down.
Finally, why would you ever care? You say that you're using an HTPC so you already have upconverted DVD playback. Methinks someone just wants to take a cheap shot at the new console...
I'll play the pedantic geek here for a moment. I believe you're correct about alternate Leeta's orientation (it's been a while) but alternate Kira was less a lesbian and more a bisexual, hedonistic dominatrix - she went after males and females alike. For her it was all about using sex as a weapon/tool.
Beyond telling you that you come off as an old crank, I thought I'd note one small correction to your rant:
I stopped FPS when everything became a weak version of CS (Tom Clancy, Rainbow Six, ad naseum).
First, it's "Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (and Ghost Recon)," not two different things. Second, the first Rainbow Six for PC came out on 07/31/98 and Half-Life (forget about Counter-Strike) came out three months later. If either was a "clone" of the other, CS would be the copycat...
I haven't seen one in use, in person, either. I did, however, see John Leguizamo playing with one on ER last night, with actual gameplay closeups - Ridge Racer if I'm not mistaken. It didn't, however, inspire me to run out and get one. :)
Obviously the point of a Video ipod is to take entertainment with you to places you would not bother to lug a laptop.
:)
You should probably be aware that grandparent's Dell Axim is a PDA (as he indicated late in the post) and not a laptop. Thus, one could presume that he "lugs" his Axim pretty much everywhere.
Just in case you're still sitting back and waiting, you need wait no longer. You're exactly right. DVDs are pressed/burned/recorded in a linear fashion, much like CDs. Once one layer is filled up, the second layer is then used. That's a slight over-simplification since, if you're recording less than 9.4GB (for a commercial DVD) but more than 4.7 GB, you might arrange the DVD in such a way that the second layer is used earlier, specifically to avoid, or at least minimize, the possibility of a layer-switch problem (which, by the way, has less to do with the DVD itself and more to do with the player - older players with smaller memory buffers have particular trouble with layer-switching).
No, actually, it's not a great idea. The whole concept (even apart from home burning) is stupid. I was only making the point that hard drives are not a prerequisite for recording cable/satellite/broadcast TV to DVD.
Oh wait. Standalone DVD recorders are already available that burn in real time without a hard drive. You might want to check out some of the new electronics that have been released over the past five years...
As to the next-gen, I won't deny that Blu-Ray will be a selling point for the PS3 (though, again, the playback quality needs to be a damn sight better than the red-pushing, out-of-synch experience I had with the PS2). My point is simply that people who will be considering an Xbox 360 before the PS3 comes out aren't going to be waiting for a PS3 for that reason alone. The fact is that people who buy consoles at or near launch ARE die-hard gamers who aren't going to be judging consoles based on some potential, but currently ephemeral, non-gaming advantage. I think this lesson was learned in spades from the Dreamcast debacle where it was a year before the PS2 provided a gaming experience nearly the quality of the GD-ROM-using DC.
Finally, I think you're wrong about HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players selling for a premium for a couple years. Not only are the manufacturers going to be competing in terms of the "format war" but they're going to be competing with "old school" DVD players as well. The manufacturers aren't going to have the luxury of waiting for the market to catch up because they'll want their particular format to have an advantage. DVD had that luxury because the only thing close to competition was Divx which was sold in one store chain (eventually making it to two, maybe three, as I remember my history), and even then Divx players could (and do) play DVD movies so each of those units sold was STILL another DVD player in terms of market penetration.
My undereducated prediction? The cheapest Blu-Ray/HD-DVD player (with DVD compatibility) will cost no more than $200 at launch and will be $150 within six months. Within two years (and maybe one), the manufacturing costs will be such that they'll stop making DVD-only players entirely and "next-gen" players will be at and under the $100 mark.
Very nice! :) Unfortunately, when I post on my work computer I'm stuck with IE6.0 and Slashcode isn't rendering the preview (which I usually rely upon heavily when posting) properly in that browsher...Of course, it's rendering very badly in Firefox, too, so I can't put all the blame on IE despite my hatred for it.
Today we have a situation where nearly everyone has a standalone DVD player, including the people who bought a PS2 with that purpose in mind (once they found out that the PS2 did a piss-poor job of playing DVDs or their PS2 crapped out on them). The only way it's going to matter in the "next-gen" console market over the next two years is if one of the new formats very rapidly develops an extensive catalog of movies, which will probably go slowly given production constraints and the need to continue supporting DVD. Even then, those who are interested are going to need a capable (DVI/HDMI) HDTV to take advantage.
There are good reasons to wait on buying a videogame console, the biggest being the high launch prices. Whether the system has DVD, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray or PR-DVD (People's Republic DVD) is at best a tertiary consideration.
No. Ultimate Spider-Man was in development at the same time as Spider-Man 2, though (obviously) the latter started development before the former. And, no. They were developed by separate teams AT Treyarch, though the USM team did work with the SM2 team. In other words, despite the implication in the review, USM is not a follow-up to SM2 except in a purely chronological sense.
1) Ultimate Spider-Man (VG) does not build on the "framework" of Spider-Man 2 (VG). It was in development before the latter even reached beta. They used some ideas from last year's game but it's a different team.
2) The plotline of "canon" Spider-Man goes back to Amazing Fantasy, not "Amazing Stories." Amazing Fantasy issue 15 for the even more anal out there.
3) Ultimate Spider-Man (the comic book) was created before the movies, let alone any "popular response" to them.
4) Mentioning Brian Michael Bendis (the writer of Ultimate Spider-Man) without mentioning Mark Bagley (the peniciller of Ultimate Spider-Man and another consultant on this videogame) is a crime against humanity, especially since the "distinctive" art style is mentioned.
If he was concerned, it would have been dead simple for him to contact the site owners and ask them some questions. Upon finding out they were legit, he could even have offered his services AS a security consultant to make sure their system was up to snuff. It's a shame that he decided to go the vigilante route.