Sure, there will always be some people who sell their old games, but if a game is good enough, few people will sell back their games to where they're actually competing with new sales. Videogames, like movies, make all their money in the first few months. If people grow tired of the games 6 months later and start selling them back, and some people who were interested but not enough to buy it at new prices start buying it, the game has already profited. If there were no used market, the numbers of people buying it 6 months out is still going to be pretty low.
Used game sales only becomes a real issue when the game is so crappy that someone sells it back within like a week, so that quickly you have cheaper versions of it on the shelves which the publisher doesn't see any profit from. And they shouldn't, if that's happening, they've really failed and should lose money.
There's enough shovelware out there for all three systems as is. Take away that mechanism and shovelware becomes more profitable and may take over gaming. Or maybe people will start actually reading reviews before buying games for their kids' wiis.
Anyway, my point is that if your game is good enough, some people will sell it back, though fewer, and it will be later, not competing with your moneymaking window
You mean SIV NEGATIVE monkeys who are engaging in unsafe behaviors (unprotected monkey sex, sharing heroin needles, and participating in HIV related research as test subjects.) Vaccines usually don't cure you once infected (rabies is a limited exception), I suppose this one might, but so far it's only been demonstrated to prevent infection, not eliminate after infection.
Not that one, I was talking about their policy of "try to punish customers into reserving by not doing a good job of guessing how many copies we need to stock up on and yelling at them in the store." Seriously, gamestop needs to hire a guy to decide how many copies to buy. Games they think will sell great, they buy in extreme excess. Almost every store has dozens of copies of unsold maddens from years past, marked at around $5. On the other hand, games they don't think will be as popular, they get exactly two more copies than were reserved. Once those get sold, they're out. Sleeper hits are sometimes incredibly hard to find because of this. For a company that does nothing besides sell games, that's absurd.
Above all, from a webcomic with no references and no legitimate claim against the group in question.
It isn't a good source for forming opinions, except when we're talking about something as trivial as corporate loyalty (which we are). Also, no legitimate claim? Their criticisms, while not as well referenced as a wikipedia page, are legitimate. Gamestop DOES DO THOSE THINGS. And they are annoying.
Except its only for consoles, which means the DRM wont be an issue.
There's been some rumblings from console devs that they're wanting to put DRM on it to prevent used sales. Seems they're convinced that somehow, because they only profit once, that's unfair if the game trades hands again. You know, just like how car manufacturers couldn't survive if people bought used cars.
... I guess now is not the best time to make that sarcastic comment, but before anyone says anything to that end, I think we can agree that the big problem for the american auto industry is not used car sales.
Nanotech doesn't seem to me to have actually arrived yet. Which while that is disappointing, the list is focused on technologies (I would call them "products" not technologies) which have gotten here already but failed to change much.
Nanotech, flying cars, cold fusion, gene therapy, xenografts, cure for cancer, cure for the common cold are probably some of the ones that would go on the list of "Hurry up with it already" but none of those could be said to have failed to change the world, they might if and when they get here.
I mean, HAS nanotech arrived and I just didn't notice? It's not really my field, but I think I would have heard about that...
They put a note on the blog saying, "When the Pyro hears about this she'll be inconsolable." There's been a debate over the Pyros gender for a long time on the forums. The post was left up for about an hour before it was stealth edited back to the masculine form. Still there was a lot of people going nuts on the forum over this.
More hilariously, they just leaked a "meet the spy" video, dropping a few more subtle hints, or at least things to encourage speculation.
Its funny how these characters who have no real names and nothing besides one liners in game have far more character and personality than many characters in more cinematic games.
You probably know, but they took out all grenades, class-specific and generic, in TF2. Thank God. The demoguy can still launch pipe bombs which can work, but there's not the suicide bombing like there was in TF1.
For tf2's requirements, a pc capable of playing it can be had for under $300, provided you build it yourself
Right, spend over $300 on a game I already have so that I can get the little extras like updates. And this of course is going to be worth it to all customers.
To be fair, I am going to be building a computer that can run TF2, but running TF2 is not my only motivation there. If I were completely happy with my current computer, but it couldn't run TF2, and had a 360 that could run it, or just didn't want to deal with building a computer myself, that would be a ridiculous waste of money.
I know you consider it a demo version, and I'd hate to let you down, but that would be something I would have to live with somehow.
Do you know anything about the Public Library of Science [plos.org]??????
No, I must have been sleeping through the day in high school where they taught us about the mission statement for PLoS.
Anyway, what does their mission statement have to do with anything? They're non-profit, so they are going to give WSJ images that haven't yet come out in their own publication for free?
Realistically, how was this not blindingly obvious? If you put a bunch of life forms into a high stress environment, evolution is going to happen quickly. Clearly, the gene for radiation resistance is going to quickly become prevalent in a population exposed to large amounts of radiation....
You're dramatically oversimplifying things. They weren't asking "will life adapt to these conditions?" Since they were studying plants that were growing in the area, they knew that much already. It was indeed blindingly obvious, they did all their experiments on the proof. They were instead asking "HOW did this life adapt." A much much more complex question. Turns out it's not one gene, and it's not even genes that can be lumped as "radiation resistance."
The real article abstract(right here) points out that these plants aren't just adapted to one new stress.
Our results suggest that adaptation toward heavy metal stress, protection against radiation damage, and mobilization of seed storage proteins are involved in plant adaptation mechanism to radioactivity in the Chernobyl region.
That last stress itself is far from obvious, maybe plant experts would have guessed that would be a problem, but for me at least, I wouldn't have guessed that would be a major problem. But apparently it is, and the plants have overcome it. I would have guessed it would all be DNA damage.
It also points out that of nearly 700 analyzed proteins, nearly 10% were expressed at different levels from I guess an uncontaminated stock. Far from one gene, seventy genes, apparently tweaked in just a few generations, not millions of years. Not blindingly obvious that evolution could work that fast on that many genes. At least not to me. I also have to point out, that as of yet they don't seem to have found any evidence that nature had to redesign any of the existing machinery, it seems rather that it just changed the levels of machinery made. That's far from certain, but it doesn't seem like it modified most of those 70 proteins, just the levels.
I'm willing to bet that even though soybeans are an important crop, we don't know all there is to know about their molecular mechanisms of dealing with any of those three problems. And even if we did, we don't know how evolution is going to co-opt these systems to deal with new challenges. So examining the actual pathways will probably tell us a great deal about which proteins are involved in these pathways, if any are being used for new purposes. We might even be able to use something we learn there in human medicine, the new scientist article mentions one of the proteins protects human blood against radiation, if we find that one protein is really critical to helping the plants cope, maybe a drug can be developed that will increase the activity or abundance in that protein to help with radiation poisoning and maybe even help with cancer.
HOW is extremely complicated, and they're just scratching the surface. It's fascinating, though not so much that I'm going to spend 30 dollars to read the article right now.
If the fossil is so complete, why does the article lack a picture of the fossil itself? Without pictures of the fossil, how can you believe what they say about whatever they find or postulate?
My guess is that Wall Street Journal didn't want to pay the prices the publisher (of the scientific journal article) is asking for permission to reprint the pictures, or something like that.
So without the pictures, you should only believe that the staff writer for the wall street journal interviewed the scientists who are saying these things. If you are skeptical about the actual finding, then read the "...paper that will detail next week the latest fossil discovery in Public Library of Science, a peer-reviewed, online journal."
If you find faults with the study in WSJ, then all blame should go to the staff writer of that, not the study itself.
"How is the news being anticipated in the scientific community? 'I honestly think this is an incredible job of marketing,' says paleontologist K. Christopher Beard of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who has not seen the report but has read the news. He points out that other fossils of similar age from China, Myanmar, and India have also been proposed as some of the earliest anthropoids. 'At this stage, color me skeptical.'"
So he admits to not RTFA but won't believe it? Yup, clearly a slashdotter.
In case you haven't figured it out, Gabe hates consoles. TF2 on xbox was just a cheap cash grab to fund further pc development.
No, the reason they haven't updated isn't that "they hate consoles" or the paying customers who use them. They are a business. The reason they haven't updated was first because MS didn't want them to give anything away free, and now they're having problems fitting the updates in and keeping the game within the 360's system requirements.
You could make a stronger case that MICROSOFT hates consoles more than valve, they're the ones who had been holding it up and who don't want consolers to think for a minute that they can get anything free.
And cheap cash grab? To adapt it to the console they had to go through a lot more troubles in development. Cheap cash grab would mean releasing all the games of orange box separately, and probably just lumping console users with mouse and keyboarders in TF2, which would put them at a severe disadvantage but would probably be easier for valve.
Which is not to say Gabe Newell is a fan of consoles, just that Valve is actually pretty great to all their customers when it's in their control. And it wouldn't exactly matter beans even if they did hate consoles.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, there will always be some people who sell their old games, but if a game is good enough, few people will sell back their games to where they're actually competing with new sales. Videogames, like movies, make all their money in the first few months. If people grow tired of the games 6 months later and start selling them back, and some people who were interested but not enough to buy it at new prices start buying it, the game has already profited. If there were no used market, the numbers of people buying it 6 months out is still going to be pretty low.
Used game sales only becomes a real issue when the game is so crappy that someone sells it back within like a week, so that quickly you have cheaper versions of it on the shelves which the publisher doesn't see any profit from. And they shouldn't, if that's happening, they've really failed and should lose money.
There's enough shovelware out there for all three systems as is. Take away that mechanism and shovelware becomes more profitable and may take over gaming. Or maybe people will start actually reading reviews before buying games for their kids' wiis.
Anyway, my point is that if your game is good enough, some people will sell it back, though fewer, and it will be later, not competing with your moneymaking window
So, does anyone think the US is interested in, say, chinese or russian sattelite images of the US for this purpose?
Anyway, I find it hard to believe that law enforcement is not following the letter of the law and saying "It's not on soil! It's in SPACE!"
You mean SIV NEGATIVE monkeys who are engaging in unsafe behaviors (unprotected monkey sex, sharing heroin needles, and participating in HIV related research as test subjects.) Vaccines usually don't cure you once infected (rabies is a limited exception), I suppose this one might, but so far it's only been demonstrated to prevent infection, not eliminate after infection.
Not that one, I was talking about their policy of "try to punish customers into reserving by not doing a good job of guessing how many copies we need to stock up on and yelling at them in the store." Seriously, gamestop needs to hire a guy to decide how many copies to buy. Games they think will sell great, they buy in extreme excess. Almost every store has dozens of copies of unsold maddens from years past, marked at around $5. On the other hand, games they don't think will be as popular, they get exactly two more copies than were reserved. Once those get sold, they're out. Sleeper hits are sometimes incredibly hard to find because of this. For a company that does nothing besides sell games, that's absurd.
Above all, from a webcomic with no references and no legitimate claim against the group in question.
It isn't a good source for forming opinions, except when we're talking about something as trivial as corporate loyalty (which we are). Also, no legitimate claim? Their criticisms, while not as well referenced as a wikipedia page, are legitimate. Gamestop DOES DO THOSE THINGS. And they are annoying.
Wait... so I'm paying someone for a game and simultaneously not giving the content creators any money?
If they make games that are good enough that people don't want to sell them back, this wouldn't be happening to them.
Except its only for consoles, which means the DRM wont be an issue.
There's been some rumblings from console devs that they're wanting to put DRM on it to prevent used sales. Seems they're convinced that somehow, because they only profit once, that's unfair if the game trades hands again. You know, just like how car manufacturers couldn't survive if people bought used cars.
My boyfriend and I dropped base last saturday morning, it was pretty warm.
Technically, I didn't say whether this was or was not cannibalism, nor did I say anything about neanderthals being a separate specie.
Of course, technically you didn't say that I did...
I think the MRI would find I preferred rotten turnip to Angelina Jolie.
Did you just say you were more sexually attracted to rotten vegetables than a woman?
Interesting. What do you call yourselves? Turnipys?
Scary because you're worried it might happen today? I've got good news: there is no way Neanderthals can go extinct at human hands today...
Where do you draw the line?
At the "is it another species" line.
No = cannibalism.
Yes = not cannibalism, though it may still be weird or gross.
Nanotech doesn't seem to me to have actually arrived yet. Which while that is disappointing, the list is focused on technologies (I would call them "products" not technologies) which have gotten here already but failed to change much.
Nanotech, flying cars, cold fusion, gene therapy, xenografts, cure for cancer, cure for the common cold are probably some of the ones that would go on the list of "Hurry up with it already" but none of those could be said to have failed to change the world, they might if and when they get here.
I mean, HAS nanotech arrived and I just didn't notice? It's not really my field, but I think I would have heard about that...
Minidisc is a good example though.
Yes, first post technology never really panned out. It is sometimes funny as a second post though, but the joke really is on the AC there.
They put a note on the blog saying, "When the Pyro hears about this she'll be inconsolable." There's been a debate over the Pyros gender for a long time on the forums. The post was left up for about an hour before it was stealth edited back to the masculine form. Still there was a lot of people going nuts on the forum over this.
More hilariously, they just leaked a "meet the spy" video, dropping a few more subtle hints, or at least things to encourage speculation.
Its funny how these characters who have no real names and nothing besides one liners in game have far more character and personality than many characters in more cinematic games.
You probably know, but they took out all grenades, class-specific and generic, in TF2. Thank God. The demoguy can still launch pipe bombs which can work, but there's not the suicide bombing like there was in TF1.
Er... what's the difference between patches and DLC? Because I know DLC has no such 10 mb limits.
For tf2's requirements, a pc capable of playing it can be had for under $300, provided you build it yourself
Right, spend over $300 on a game I already have so that I can get the little extras like updates. And this of course is going to be worth it to all customers.
To be fair, I am going to be building a computer that can run TF2, but running TF2 is not my only motivation there. If I were completely happy with my current computer, but it couldn't run TF2, and had a 360 that could run it, or just didn't want to deal with building a computer myself, that would be a ridiculous waste of money.
I know you consider it a demo version, and I'd hate to let you down, but that would be something I would have to live with somehow.
Do you know anything about the Public Library of Science [plos.org]??????
No, I must have been sleeping through the day in high school where they taught us about the mission statement for PLoS.
Anyway, what does their mission statement have to do with anything? They're non-profit, so they are going to give WSJ images that haven't yet come out in their own publication for free?
Realistically, how was this not blindingly obvious?
If you put a bunch of life forms into a high stress environment, evolution is going to happen quickly. Clearly, the gene for radiation resistance is going to quickly become prevalent in a population exposed to large amounts of radiation....
You're dramatically oversimplifying things. They weren't asking "will life adapt to these conditions?" Since they were studying plants that were growing in the area, they knew that much already. It was indeed blindingly obvious, they did all their experiments on the proof. They were instead asking "HOW did this life adapt." A much much more complex question. Turns out it's not one gene, and it's not even genes that can be lumped as "radiation resistance."
The real article abstract(right here) points out that these plants aren't just adapted to one new stress.
That last stress itself is far from obvious, maybe plant experts would have guessed that would be a problem, but for me at least, I wouldn't have guessed that would be a major problem. But apparently it is, and the plants have overcome it. I would have guessed it would all be DNA damage.
It also points out that of nearly 700 analyzed proteins, nearly 10% were expressed at different levels from I guess an uncontaminated stock. Far from one gene, seventy genes, apparently tweaked in just a few generations, not millions of years. Not blindingly obvious that evolution could work that fast on that many genes. At least not to me. I also have to point out, that as of yet they don't seem to have found any evidence that nature had to redesign any of the existing machinery, it seems rather that it just changed the levels of machinery made. That's far from certain, but it doesn't seem like it modified most of those 70 proteins, just the levels.
I'm willing to bet that even though soybeans are an important crop, we don't know all there is to know about their molecular mechanisms of dealing with any of those three problems. And even if we did, we don't know how evolution is going to co-opt these systems to deal with new challenges. So examining the actual pathways will probably tell us a great deal about which proteins are involved in these pathways, if any are being used for new purposes. We might even be able to use something we learn there in human medicine, the new scientist article mentions one of the proteins protects human blood against radiation, if we find that one protein is really critical to helping the plants cope, maybe a drug can be developed that will increase the activity or abundance in that protein to help with radiation poisoning and maybe even help with cancer.
HOW is extremely complicated, and they're just scratching the surface. It's fascinating, though not so much that I'm going to spend 30 dollars to read the article right now.
It is important not to associate belief with knowledge.
It's important not to make trivial semantic arguments out to be important, because they're not.
If the fossil is so complete, why does the article lack a picture of the fossil itself? Without pictures of the fossil, how can you believe what they say about whatever they find or postulate?
My guess is that Wall Street Journal didn't want to pay the prices the publisher (of the scientific journal article) is asking for permission to reprint the pictures, or something like that.
So without the pictures, you should only believe that the staff writer for the wall street journal interviewed the scientists who are saying these things. If you are skeptical about the actual finding, then read the "...paper that will detail next week the latest fossil discovery in Public Library of Science, a peer-reviewed, online journal."
If you find faults with the study in WSJ, then all blame should go to the staff writer of that, not the study itself.
"How is the news being anticipated in the scientific community? 'I honestly think this is an incredible job of marketing,' says paleontologist K. Christopher Beard of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who has not seen the report but has read the news. He points out that other fossils of similar age from China, Myanmar, and India have also been proposed as some of the earliest anthropoids. 'At this stage, color me skeptical.'"
So he admits to not RTFA but won't believe it? Yup, clearly a slashdotter.
In case you haven't figured it out, Gabe hates consoles. TF2 on xbox was just a cheap cash grab to fund further pc development.
No, the reason they haven't updated isn't that "they hate consoles" or the paying customers who use them. They are a business. The reason they haven't updated was first because MS didn't want them to give anything away free, and now they're having problems fitting the updates in and keeping the game within the 360's system requirements.
You could make a stronger case that MICROSOFT hates consoles more than valve, they're the ones who had been holding it up and who don't want consolers to think for a minute that they can get anything free.
And cheap cash grab? To adapt it to the console they had to go through a lot more troubles in development. Cheap cash grab would mean releasing all the games of orange box separately, and probably just lumping console users with mouse and keyboarders in TF2, which would put them at a severe disadvantage but would probably be easier for valve.
Which is not to say Gabe Newell is a fan of consoles, just that Valve is actually pretty great to all their customers when it's in their control. And it wouldn't exactly matter beans even if they did hate consoles.
How can you argue against something that makes it more difficult for asshat dictators to remain in power?
Easy: read the youtube comments.
"SackBratch
Is this guy the doctor from Star Trek Voyager?
FireStorm821
wow put a fucking link in the sidebar to the translation not on the bottom where we cant copy it
imgoing2hellcom
i hear you in new york.....no freakin do something about this guatemalans and stop bringing this stuff to the usa
mrerick7
stalin had a lot lot more than the fagg we have as president!
in fact colom would be like a stupid germ or bacteria in salin's shoe!"
Note that I had to do more digging than usual (IE going to the second page) because most were of course in spanish and I don't speak spanish.