I admittedly didn't buy the game until the 1.3 patch (early November, if that helps), but the game ran just fine for me, to be honest. I do have 1Gb of memory, mind you.
So, EA have taken some of the games they released well before Christmas, and reduced their prices in January? Shocking. One would almost think that it's Sale season.
Mind you, I quite fancy getting the latest SSX on the Gamecube, so I shouldn't complain too much.
Umm, no. They compared the size of launch XBox games to current ones to get an idea of how much games grow over the lifetime of the machine. Then they measured the size of current 360 games (which already have those shiny textures you want), multiplied by the growth factor and found that the size they got would still fit on a single DVD-9.
Actually, I'm not sure I want to know all the details there, myself. Book kicks arse for the Lord, and clearly did so for someone else (someone Alliance) before. The vague knowledge that there's Something Afoot is far more scary than whatever answer Joss might eventually have decided to give us.
I'm watching the movie tomorrow night, after devouring the entire series in the last couple of weeks. The whole Mal/Inara thing still being left hanging is going to be painful, frankly.
I don't know about "companies like Nintendo", but Nintendo themselves have the DS, which seems to utterly dominate videogaming amongst the 25-35 people I know. Whether its strategy gaming with Advance Wars, puzzlers like Meteos and Zoo Keeper or collaborative sandbox things like Nintendogs and Advance Wars they're doing a far better job of getting our attention than EXTREEEEEME CHAV RACER 12, Shoot Everything Yet Again or sports games.
The only other thing to come close is the mighty SingStar from Sony London, which has sold a _lot_ of PS2s to people who didn't understand why I'd want a console at all.
The setting is Columbine? Given that the one shot released so far shows a kid wearing a stereotypical UK school uniform outside stereotypical UK school gates, I'd love to know where he got that idea, because it's not something the guys at DMA have mentioned to my knowledge.
Take Two's stock taking a big hit wouldn't have anything to do with that fact that they _didn't_ release a new GTA title for the PS2 this year?
Stuff all the arguments about the morality, but any company whose income level goes through the floor (because hardly anyone bought The Warriors in comparison to the millions of copies of San Andreas the previous year) should EXPECT their share price to fall.
My old, outdated, no longer available for sale (sadly - I prefer it to the Nano) iPod Mini fits in the coin pocket of my current jeans really nicely. What's the point of having headphones and a dock in there, other than to have a nightmare washing them?
Meanwhile, I've stopped buying racing games on any console other than the PS2, because I love my steering wheel setup too much to go back to playing on a pad where there's no fine control.
Driving seems so easy on a pad normally (though start and select are the worst places I've ever heard anyone suggest for the gears; either triggers or preferably OutRun 2's cunning use of the right analogue stick please) because the game puts tonnes of simplifying stuff between you and the vehicle.
Film reviewers often go to cinema screenings anyway. This article is about BAFTA members who aren't "reviewing" the film for the press, but deciding whether or not to vote it onto the nominations list for the awards. No-one loses out if they vote for something else except the people behind Munich.
If you had Read That Fine Article, you'd know we're talking about the 5000 members of the British Academy for Film and Television. The people who vote for the BAFTAs, the UK equivalent of the Oscars.
On the other hand, all the national, local and online outlets in the UK that get review copies things adds up to a fair number in itself.
I'm sure that the studios are all quaking in their boots at the thought of an American Academy member lending their screeners to a BAFTA member. Imagine the chaos!
Every British Academy member I've spoken to, and to be fair, that's not a huge sample. More like 3. But every British Academy member I've spoken to has a normal multi-region player as well as their special screener player.
So the wrong region code wouldn't be an issue if the things didn't have the extra special "don't use their normal player" protection.
How often they can be bothered to hook up a different player to their setup to watch screeners is a guessing exercise left for the reader.
If you only want 2-3 tracks then by all means go to the iTMS (I have in about 3 instances so far myself. But the vast, vast majority of albums I buy are by bands I buy, so I want the whole thing. At which point I'll get the disc and import it into iTunes myself.
That way I've got the high-quality version for my proper hi-fi at home, and a reasonable-sized AAC at adequate quality for portable use on my PC and iPod, and so don't have to cart the CDs about as you were complaining in the post I replied too.
"Precisely what was the point of mentioning that the MP3 player most bought was the iPod?"
The fact that these numbers were examining sales at the iTunes Music Store? A vendor whose product doesn't work with the other players?
Just why is it that every owner of a non-Apple portable music player feels the need to drone on about how the media is biased toward the brand that dominates the market, anyway?
DVDs stopped being "good enough" for some people the moment they started watching films in HD over broadcast. Before HD came along, DVD looked better than broadcast TV, so if you're a video quality freak there was a reason other than convenience to buy/rent that film on disc rather than watching it on Tivo. But if you've got a good, big screen then broadcast HD is really quite easy to tell apart from a DVD of the same movie. Which is a good enough reason (for some people) to want a better format.
DVDs will carry on being released for years still. If you don't think a HD format is worth upgrading to, don't.
If you're happy with your 27" TV, then I'm not surprised you're happy with standard-def discs. I'm happy for you, and you'll save yourself a lot of money by not upgrading.
Some people have bigger, HD screens and want a device that can give them movies that make the most of them. Those people will want to upgrade.
Basically, your complaint is the same as asking why new consoles are coming out when I was perfectly happy with the games on my Dreamcast.
When I got my iPod, I gave this a bit of thought. Then I realised that a mugger clever enough to notice the telltale white earbuds would probably be less interested in standard buds that may well be attached to a £59 512Mb Shuffle than the £129 Etymotic earbuds the guy sitting next to me has attached to an unspecified device that clearly justifies that kind of headphone expenditure.
I don't know about you, but I have this wonderful program called "iTunes". It allows me to transfer those CDs to my iPod without spending a single additional penny.
Given that Sky are planning to broadcast all HD at 50Hz in the UK later this year, so we can still look forward to suffering the effects of PAL speedup, I'm not holding my breath for sanity to prevail any time soon.
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I admittedly didn't buy the game until the 1.3 patch (early November, if that helps), but the game ran just fine for me, to be honest. I do have 1Gb of memory, mind you.
So, EA have taken some of the games they released well before Christmas, and reduced their prices in January? Shocking. One would almost think that it's Sale season.
Mind you, I quite fancy getting the latest SSX on the Gamecube, so I shouldn't complain too much.
Umm, no. They compared the size of launch XBox games to current ones to get an idea of how much games grow over the lifetime of the machine. Then they measured the size of current 360 games (which already have those shiny textures you want), multiplied by the growth factor and found that the size they got would still fit on a single DVD-9.
Actually, I'm not sure I want to know all the details there, myself. Book kicks arse for the Lord, and clearly did so for someone else (someone Alliance) before. The vague knowledge that there's Something Afoot is far more scary than whatever answer Joss might eventually have decided to give us.
I'm watching the movie tomorrow night, after devouring the entire series in the last couple of weeks. The whole Mal/Inara thing still being left hanging is going to be painful, frankly.
I don't know about "companies like Nintendo", but Nintendo themselves have the DS, which seems to utterly dominate videogaming amongst the 25-35 people I know. Whether its strategy gaming with Advance Wars, puzzlers like Meteos and Zoo Keeper or collaborative sandbox things like Nintendogs and Advance Wars they're doing a far better job of getting our attention than EXTREEEEEME CHAV RACER 12, Shoot Everything Yet Again or sports games.
The only other thing to come close is the mighty SingStar from Sony London, which has sold a _lot_ of PS2s to people who didn't understand why I'd want a console at all.
The setting is Columbine? Given that the one shot released so far shows a kid wearing a stereotypical UK school uniform outside stereotypical UK school gates, I'd love to know where he got that idea, because it's not something the guys at DMA have mentioned to my knowledge.
Take Two's stock taking a big hit wouldn't have anything to do with that fact that they _didn't_ release a new GTA title for the PS2 this year?
Stuff all the arguments about the morality, but any company whose income level goes through the floor (because hardly anyone bought The Warriors in comparison to the millions of copies of San Andreas the previous year) should EXPECT their share price to fall.
Don't be silly.
In 2010 all games will have 2011 in the title. When was the last time you saw EA release a game in the year stated in the title?
My old, outdated, no longer available for sale (sadly - I prefer it to the Nano) iPod Mini fits in the coin pocket of my current jeans really nicely. What's the point of having headphones and a dock in there, other than to have a nightmare washing them?
Meanwhile, I've stopped buying racing games on any console other than the PS2, because I love my steering wheel setup too much to go back to playing on a pad where there's no fine control.
Driving seems so easy on a pad normally (though start and select are the worst places I've ever heard anyone suggest for the gears; either triggers or preferably OutRun 2's cunning use of the right analogue stick please) because the game puts tonnes of simplifying stuff between you and the vehicle.
Film reviewers often go to cinema screenings anyway. This article is about BAFTA members who aren't "reviewing" the film for the press, but deciding whether or not to vote it onto the nominations list for the awards. No-one loses out if they vote for something else except the people behind Munich.
If you had Read That Fine Article, you'd know we're talking about the 5000 members of the British Academy for Film and Television. The people who vote for the BAFTAs, the UK equivalent of the Oscars.
On the other hand, all the national, local and online outlets in the UK that get review copies things adds up to a fair number in itself.
I'm sure that the studios are all quaking in their boots at the thought of an American Academy member lending their screeners to a BAFTA member. Imagine the chaos!
Every British Academy member I've spoken to, and to be fair, that's not a huge sample. More like 3. But every British Academy member I've spoken to has a normal multi-region player as well as their special screener player.
So the wrong region code wouldn't be an issue if the things didn't have the extra special "don't use their normal player" protection.
How often they can be bothered to hook up a different player to their setup to watch screeners is a guessing exercise left for the reader.
It isn't like setting fire to the villager caused them to run into your house, at which point your entire house burns down, then.
Which would be unfortunate.
The Grandparent is right to point out that the 360 is a dumb thing to compare sales to, however. The Hardware numbers for that week:
DS - 390,181 (Sold Out)
PSP - 110,741
PS2 - 78,646
GBA SP - 15,998
GC - 12,579
Xbox 360 - 12,300
GBM - 11,234
GBA - 447
Xbox - 121
So the DS isn't just outselling the 360 (which the silly blurb finds notable), but outselling it over 31 times.
If you only want 2-3 tracks then by all means go to the iTMS (I have in about 3 instances so far myself. But the vast, vast majority of albums I buy are by bands I buy, so I want the whole thing. At which point I'll get the disc and import it into iTunes myself.
That way I've got the high-quality version for my proper hi-fi at home, and a reasonable-sized AAC at adequate quality for portable use on my PC and iPod, and so don't have to cart the CDs about as you were complaining in the post I replied too.
"Precisely what was the point of mentioning that the MP3 player most bought was the iPod?"
The fact that these numbers were examining sales at the iTunes Music Store? A vendor whose product doesn't work with the other players?
Just why is it that every owner of a non-Apple portable music player feels the need to drone on about how the media is biased toward the brand that dominates the market, anyway?
DVDs stopped being "good enough" for some people the moment they started watching films in HD over broadcast. Before HD came along, DVD looked better than broadcast TV, so if you're a video quality freak there was a reason other than convenience to buy/rent that film on disc rather than watching it on Tivo. But if you've got a good, big screen then broadcast HD is really quite easy to tell apart from a DVD of the same movie. Which is a good enough reason (for some people) to want a better format.
DVDs will carry on being released for years still. If you don't think a HD format is worth upgrading to, don't.
If you're happy with your 27" TV, then I'm not surprised you're happy with standard-def discs. I'm happy for you, and you'll save yourself a lot of money by not upgrading.
Some people have bigger, HD screens and want a device that can give them movies that make the most of them. Those people will want to upgrade.
Basically, your complaint is the same as asking why new consoles are coming out when I was perfectly happy with the games on my Dreamcast.
When I got my iPod, I gave this a bit of thought. Then I realised that a mugger clever enough to notice the telltale white earbuds would probably be less interested in standard buds that may well be attached to a £59 512Mb Shuffle than the £129 Etymotic earbuds the guy sitting next to me has attached to an unspecified device that clearly justifies that kind of headphone expenditure.
I don't know about you, but I have this wonderful program called "iTunes". It allows me to transfer those CDs to my iPod without spending a single additional penny.
Given that Sky are planning to broadcast all HD at 50Hz in the UK later this year, so we can still look forward to suffering the effects of PAL speedup, I'm not holding my breath for sanity to prevail any time soon.
"American readers know what product M&S sells, or what its famous for"
Probably very few. However, The Guardian is a UK paper, and the vast, vast majority of its readers will know who M&S are.