Actually, if you read many sources, GTA4 is supposed to be the last exclusive PS2 title in the current contract, and said current contract is set to expire ironically enough at the end of October (though GTA4 will still be exclusive for a year I'm sure). So what you know, is not fact, it's just what you know.
If you look up Mr Taves at the Seattle PI you'd find he's actually the video game columnist. And I have to add one thing, the article did a bad job of quoting the article.
If you go to the article (which can be found here you will see that there is one additional line to the article. And I quote: "Scott Taves is a lifelong nerd who favors shooters and survival horror games."
I don't think the article was meant to be taken at face value... (but if you search his other articles, he does pick Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness as a hot pick) but I think the ommission of that last line from the article on the website linked above does leave out something interesting and insightful.
Just for the record, since the PI is my local large market newspaper (even though I'm 150 miles away), and my favorite of the two Seattle papers, I am writing a letter to the editor (by email of course) pointing out the backlash this article has created in the gaming community (as well as mentioning seeing if putting slashdot in the newspaper has a slashdot type effect). I'll let you know if it gets printed
Did Blaster send one of the big moderators back to April 1st? The domain speaks for itself. Is there anything that could be truly useful to be found on a website with the domain pointlesswasteoftime.com?
I maybe missed something, but I didn't see anywhere were it said Boggs used her roommate's computer.
If you live in an apartment with a roommate and have DSL, does each of you pay the $40-60 a month so you can each have your own name and address registered with the phone company? No
Most roommates would easily just share one internet account name, from dial-up to fiber, because what's the point for paying twice for something that either both of you could use at one time (like DSL) or only one can use at a time (dial-up)?
I'm not sure if people realized, but quite a while ago, Gamespy and Nintendo reached a development agreement. The idea was that Nintendo would give gamespy full access to how the LAN play on gamecube worked with the network architecture information, and in return, Gamespy would create a tunnel code and set up their own servers to arrage games (much like they do for everything else and Halo) for gamers to find eachother over the net and play online over broadband connections.
See, that's what bugs me when everyone says that Nintendo doesn't have an online strategy. At least with Nintendo's strategy of giving gamespy the information in return for creating the software (though technically unsupported) is very smart. Online gaming ability, only ever costing the consumer $35 out of pocket specifically (for the broadband adaptor) where as the consumer never has to pay the cost of developing online cost for a game, a monthly service charge to access a game, and no yearly charge to have online features.
If this turns out to be very popular and used by millions of gamecube owners, then Nintendo will put in the effort to do something of their own. Nintendo isn't stupid, and knows that just throwing money at a fad won't help anything. If they see through the gamespy system, or one like the one done by small groups, then Nintendo will have more incentive to put the effort in to give people the Nintendo Experience in an online format.
they can turn around and say "The PS3: 1543.2 games available from day one!" No other console maker could compete with a statement like that.
Assuming the idea works well enough and Nintendo includes both gamecube backwards compatibility and maybe have something like the Gameboy Player included in their next console, they could actually say "2000+ games available from day 1" (2000 since it'll still be a few years and with all the junk GBA titles that come out a year, it'll have some more games.
Some of the best headlines announcing the release for the Gameboy Player read something like "Gameboy Player Released or Gamecube library jumps by 1400 games in one day".
This isn't so much about keeping violent videogames out of the hands of minors. The principle behind this, and why the ISDA has been so against this law, is it renders their ratings useless.
The premise is that any game that featured any violence against cops would automatically be treated like a rated M game. This means games like Enter the Matrix, which is rated Teen, would not be able to be sold to teens.
If a game rated for everyone (let's say for this example something like Super Smash Brother's Melee) had a cop in it, even if it wasn't realistic and that cop was fighting, it would be ILLEGAL to sell it to anyone under 17. This is where the problem lies.
Think of it this way. If there was an equivilant law for movies, the disney animated "Robin Hood", which is rated G of course, would end up with an NC-17 rating due to the fact that there is violence against the Sherrif of Nottingham.
In the end, you have to look at how this would affect other genres if they had the same laws. The ISDA fought this because they've been trying to get universal recognition of their ratings system (since certain Senators don't recognize there is one), and a law like this hurts that.
No no no, you got it wrong. You skipped a movie. The Enterprise is supposed to go back to that Nebula thing, find out that somehow when the Scimitar got destroyed with it's life-ending-weapon, that it created a new planet, and Data's body has been resurrected, and needs to transfer his mind out of B4 in order to remember who he is.
There's one part that everyone seems to forget about when they dog on the 150 point win. The standings for a season don't just go by wins, they go by overall points won/lost by. So even if your team ends up losing by a lot of points (book 3 anyone), and they end up getting flattened by another, and then you flatten that team, you can still be in the lead. It's overall points earned in a season, not just one game that counts for who really wins. Remember that. Plus as they say in book 4, some games have gone on for literal weeks, because catching the snitch isn't always just a simple affair.
Yes they will develop for GBA still. Besides, something ironic has occured to me. Despite the gamecube being called a kiddy console, it doesn't really seem to be owned by a lot of kids, does it? I mean, yeah, the GBA is probably the largest offender in what is a kiddie product, but said kiddy product even has Microsoft still developing games for it. Acclaim will always make money off the GBA because kids have them, and are willing to spend money on crap. Most educated adults (read Nintendo Fanboys from the NES era) aren't gonna buy any crap game that's out there just for the sake of having a crap game. So without games like pokemon yet for gamecube, the cube is actually probably more owned by, played by, and bought for by adults.
Honestly, how many KIDS nowadays have X-box's or PS2's, because Nintendo is considered kiddy? Probably not that many... so the kiddiest console of them all, probably has the least kiddy players on it. How ironic is that.
I don't know, I've felt that at least compared to the PS2, many games are better with the gamecube controller. The Second Analog stick is in a normal place comparatively, but I love the left analog stick where it's at. Granted, it does need a bigger d-pad.
As for my games. I have a few. First Party: (4) Super Smash Brothers Melee, Eternal Darkness, Zelda (and N64 versions), Rogue Leader,
Third Party: (12) Fifa 2002, Outlaw Golf, TimeSplitters 2, Simpsons Road Rage, crazy taxi, Tony Hawk 3, All Star Baseball 2002, Sega NBA 2k2, Madden 2002, NCAA football 2003, Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, 007: Agent under Fire
As you can tell, I use my cube for lots of sports games (I'll be getting F-Zero GX for sure). I've never found too much difficulty, and feel way out of place playing a lot of the games with the PS2's d-pad.
Actually, if you listen to Microsoft's strategy, they don't care if the X-box breaks even. Put it this way: Through the last financial cycle, counting sales of hardware and games, Microsoft has lost half a billion dollars on the X-box. If you read one of the earlier replies that said $10 a copy royalties for a $50 game, and Microsoft was losing between 100-150 a console at the start of the X-box's system life, it would take 10-15 games just to break even. Attach rate is also only counting first few months sales... over the long term of the console, it's expected most people would buy the 10-15 games. Plus eventually the prices should become cheap enough to produce the console they get a profit from it at the end of the system's lifespan. So since Microsoft has lost so much money, it does signal infact that it does take a lot for them to break even.
Don't tell me we're back to this. Your statement is simply not true at all. X-box and Ps2 have been sold at a loss, but the Nintendo Gamecube, Gameboy Advance, and the Gameboy Advance SP have NEVER during their entire life cycles yet been sold for a loss whatsoever. Nintendo is making the Gamecube's right now for only about $50, so even giving away a free game, they still make over $50 a console sold in profit.
The original Gameboy Advance, they were able to lower the cost point of that down so low that they reduced the price of the system when it was still selling like hotcakes. I may be wrong, but I don't think any manufacterer has ever done anything like that before. That would have been like Microsoft selling Halo for $20 after it hit a million copies sold.
The GBA SP is still selling at a profit and always has.
Also, your post makes it seem like you're saying that selling games is pure profit, but it's not. Of a $50 game, between $2.50 and $5 goes to the store that sold it, another $20 or so to the company whose console it's sold for, then the rest back to the developer, to cover the cost of production, design, and manufactering.
And losses for the two consoles being sold at a loss are supposed to currently be over $50... so no, one game does not make up for selling a console at a loss. Normally, It is 6-8 games that is considered the point for breaking even.
I have the wavebird, the one made directly by Nintendo, and the only problems I've ever had as an issue with it and latency is if I'm at somebody's house and they have a very cheaply made wireless phone. There are knockoffs of the wavebird that from what I understand, have not gone anywhere near the ease of use and juse quality that the wavebirds have.
It's actually very likely that with Nintendo's next console, the system will use something that would be equivilant to a 4th generation wavebird. (First being the originals, second being 900Mhz range, 3rd being 2.4Ghz range, 4th being 3 maybe). But prolly still have a port to plug in wired controllers or additional 3rd party devices. Considering all the accolades Nintendo has received for the wavebird, it would be very likely for them to do this. Plus they could end up coming out cheaper for the controllers (with rumble that doesn't suck as much battery life) since they'd have the reciever bit built right into the console.
They could also feasably go like the GBA SP and have the controllers for it come with a high powered rechargable battery, and have it where the controllers could just dock with the next system (I'm thinking like how electric toothbrushes can charge without ever having any metal on metal pieces), or directly plug a cable into the controllers when they weren't in use.
1) The GBA player for the gamecube, is only supposed to top out at $50
2) The GBA SP is making money. You don't go bundling a complete seperate system with another for $150 when one of the systems is consistantly still selling out at $99 a pop.
The closest chance to this happening would be to bundle the Gamecube with an original GBA, since there would be a lower price difference and all, and more incentive for some to buy that bundle.
Sorry dude, but at least in the US and Japan, Nintendo has never sold the Gamecube or Gameboy advance at a loss. That's actually why the GBA was lowered to $80 originally, cause they were producing them cheap enough that they could make a decent profit even at an $80 sale point.
Microsoft and Sony were selling the PS2 and X-box at about a $150 loss at the beginning of their consoles lifecycles. Sony, having been doing it for longer, brought the price down (though prolly still losing money), while Microsoft has had to lower their prices earlier to keep up with Sony, thus keeping the rather large margin of production costs.
My name is Rinda Vas from American greetings, and I am sending you this cease and desist order based on a posting you made on Slashdot.org regarding the email address Rinda.Vas@amgreetings.com. This posting of the email address is a violation of our trademarks, and we'll have to ask you to stop. Thank you
When did X-box sales pick up in Europe. I remember back in May when the GCN was released in Europe. It had more pre-orders for the entire EU than X-boxen sold to date. Face it though, Europe and Australia are just not big markets for games as compared to the US and Japan. (also look at the fact that 2 million dollars for a movie is really good in Australia during theater release).
Actually, you're wrong in this. The Gamecube started selling in Europe 2 months after the X-Box. Sad part was, in all of Europe there were more pre-ordered Gamecubes than there were X-box's sold.
Actually, Microsoft didn't buy only half of Rare. Rare was putting itself on the auction block, and offered the opportunity to Nintendo to buy the other 51 percent that it didn't own. Nintendo decided that since Rare was taking so long for games that weren't of great of quality as PD, Goldeneye, and the DKC games on the Super Nintendo, to drop it. When Microsoft decided to purchase Rare, Nintendo sold it's 49% share in the company to them, and the two halves were bought for $500 million. Don't know how that really divided though between Rare and Nintendo.
Okay, I'm wondering how many people are ignoring the obvious here. China among other countries are notorious for things such as piracy and such. If you think about it, so far the Gamecube is the only system that's escaped real piracy and modding. If you release a gamecube into a country like this, you'll have more people trying to copy things. So if you look at it that way, it prevents piracy by not giving the piraters a chance to make copies illegally, since the Chinese government wont do anything to stop them anyway.
Okay, you're missing a few things here.
I happen to work for a farm that supplies potatos to Frito Lay (occassionally up to a million pounds a day). If you saw the number of potatos that normally get rejected or filtered out for some reason, you could understand how this could be a good thing. Like many foods, potatos for human consumption have to meet certain requirements, and those used for stuff like chips have to meet even tougher requirements. As a result, many many tons of potatos are generally thrown out in some fashion or another. Many times they're sent to be mashed up for non-human use, so it's actually doubtful that the people doing this would actually use the human-consumable quality, as that's worth more than double what the really crappy quality stuff is, and the crappy quality stuff still has all the starch in it.
Perhaps paying farmers for the crops they have to throw away will make more of them more willing to grow more food for feeding hungry people?
Um, just wait 5 more months and play splinter cell on the gamecube... Resident Evil 0 (and eventually 4) on gamecube... Metroid Prime (currently looking to be rated as the game of the year, all systems) on Gamecube... Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (currently looking to rates as the best game of all time) on Gamecube in March. Everybody right now is still about eye-candy, I would have thought that an article that suggests games should target mature audiences would mean that mature audiences would rather have substance than boobies. Too bad I was wrong, huh?
With all this talk about hacking so you can disable x-boxes from the XBL system, if M$ notices a lot coming from the same IP address, why can't they just invalidate the XBL account number (granted, I don't know if they even keep track of account numbers yet)... make people have to pay for the service again....
Though that would be funny to see a script that gives MS your credit card number for a new account, change the MAC and serial, and repeat. MS certainly wouldn't mind whatsoever.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, if you read many sources, GTA4 is supposed to be the last exclusive PS2 title in the current contract, and said current contract is set to expire ironically enough at the end of October (though GTA4 will still be exclusive for a year I'm sure). So what you know, is not fact, it's just what you know.
If you look up Mr Taves at the Seattle PI you'd find he's actually the video game columnist. And I have to add one thing, the article did a bad job of quoting the article.
If you go to the article (which can be found here you will see that there is one additional line to the article. And I quote: "Scott Taves is a lifelong nerd who favors shooters and survival horror games."
I don't think the article was meant to be taken at face value... (but if you search his other articles, he does pick Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness as a hot pick) but I think the ommission of that last line from the article on the website linked above does leave out something interesting and insightful.
Just for the record, since the PI is my local large market newspaper (even though I'm 150 miles away), and my favorite of the two Seattle papers, I am writing a letter to the editor (by email of course) pointing out the backlash this article has created in the gaming community (as well as mentioning seeing if putting slashdot in the newspaper has a slashdot type effect). I'll let you know if it gets printed
Did Blaster send one of the big moderators back to April 1st? The domain speaks for itself. Is there anything that could be truly useful to be found on a website with the domain pointlesswasteoftime.com?
I maybe missed something, but I didn't see anywhere were it said Boggs used her roommate's computer.
If you live in an apartment with a roommate and have DSL, does each of you pay the $40-60 a month so you can each have your own name and address registered with the phone company? No
Most roommates would easily just share one internet account name, from dial-up to fiber, because what's the point for paying twice for something that either both of you could use at one time (like DSL) or only one can use at a time (dial-up)?
I'm not sure if people realized, but quite a while ago, Gamespy and Nintendo reached a development agreement. The idea was that Nintendo would give gamespy full access to how the LAN play on gamecube worked with the network architecture information, and in return, Gamespy would create a tunnel code and set up their own servers to arrage games (much like they do for everything else and Halo) for gamers to find eachother over the net and play online over broadband connections.
See, that's what bugs me when everyone says that Nintendo doesn't have an online strategy. At least with Nintendo's strategy of giving gamespy the information in return for creating the software (though technically unsupported) is very smart. Online gaming ability, only ever costing the consumer $35 out of pocket specifically (for the broadband adaptor) where as the consumer never has to pay the cost of developing online cost for a game, a monthly service charge to access a game, and no yearly charge to have online features.
If this turns out to be very popular and used by millions of gamecube owners, then Nintendo will put in the effort to do something of their own. Nintendo isn't stupid, and knows that just throwing money at a fad won't help anything. If they see through the gamespy system, or one like the one done by small groups, then Nintendo will have more incentive to put the effort in to give people the Nintendo Experience in an online format.
they can turn around and say "The PS3: 1543.2 games available from day one!" No other console maker could compete with a statement like that.
Assuming the idea works well enough and Nintendo includes both gamecube backwards compatibility and maybe have something like the Gameboy Player included in their next console, they could actually say "2000+ games available from day 1" (2000 since it'll still be a few years and with all the junk GBA titles that come out a year, it'll have some more games.
Some of the best headlines announcing the release for the Gameboy Player read something like "Gameboy Player Released or Gamecube library jumps by 1400 games in one day".
It's the colors, and the fact that only 1000 of these will ever be made. Talk about instant collectors item for the winners.
This isn't so much about keeping violent videogames out of the hands of minors. The principle behind this, and why the ISDA has been so against this law, is it renders their ratings useless.
The premise is that any game that featured any violence against cops would automatically be treated like a rated M game. This means games like Enter the Matrix, which is rated Teen, would not be able to be sold to teens.
If a game rated for everyone (let's say for this example something like Super Smash Brother's Melee) had a cop in it, even if it wasn't realistic and that cop was fighting, it would be ILLEGAL to sell it to anyone under 17. This is where the problem lies.
Think of it this way. If there was an equivilant law for movies, the disney animated "Robin Hood", which is rated G of course, would end up with an NC-17 rating due to the fact that there is violence against the Sherrif of Nottingham.
In the end, you have to look at how this would affect other genres if they had the same laws. The ISDA fought this because they've been trying to get universal recognition of their ratings system (since certain Senators don't recognize there is one), and a law like this hurts that.
No no no, you got it wrong. You skipped a movie. The Enterprise is supposed to go back to that Nebula thing, find out that somehow when the Scimitar got destroyed with it's life-ending-weapon, that it created a new planet, and Data's body has been resurrected, and needs to transfer his mind out of B4 in order to remember who he is.
:)
Duh!
There's one part that everyone seems to forget about when they dog on the 150 point win. The standings for a season don't just go by wins, they go by overall points won/lost by. So even if your team ends up losing by a lot of points (book 3 anyone), and they end up getting flattened by another, and then you flatten that team, you can still be in the lead. It's overall points earned in a season, not just one game that counts for who really wins. Remember that. Plus as they say in book 4, some games have gone on for literal weeks, because catching the snitch isn't always just a simple affair.
Yes they will develop for GBA still. Besides, something ironic has occured to me. Despite the gamecube being called a kiddy console, it doesn't really seem to be owned by a lot of kids, does it? I mean, yeah, the GBA is probably the largest offender in what is a kiddie product, but said kiddy product even has Microsoft still developing games for it. Acclaim will always make money off the GBA because kids have them, and are willing to spend money on crap. Most educated adults (read Nintendo Fanboys from the NES era) aren't gonna buy any crap game that's out there just for the sake of having a crap game. So without games like pokemon yet for gamecube, the cube is actually probably more owned by, played by, and bought for by adults.
Honestly, how many KIDS nowadays have X-box's or PS2's, because Nintendo is considered kiddy? Probably not that many... so the kiddiest console of them all, probably has the least kiddy players on it. How ironic is that.
I don't know, I've felt that at least compared to the PS2, many games are better with the gamecube controller. The Second Analog stick is in a normal place comparatively, but I love the left analog stick where it's at. Granted, it does need a bigger d-pad.
As for my games. I have a few.
First Party: (4) Super Smash Brothers Melee, Eternal Darkness, Zelda (and N64 versions), Rogue Leader,
Third Party: (12) Fifa 2002, Outlaw Golf, TimeSplitters 2, Simpsons Road Rage, crazy taxi, Tony Hawk 3, All Star Baseball 2002, Sega NBA 2k2, Madden 2002, NCAA football 2003, Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, 007: Agent under Fire
As you can tell, I use my cube for lots of sports games (I'll be getting F-Zero GX for sure). I've never found too much difficulty, and feel way out of place playing a lot of the games with the PS2's d-pad.
Actually, if you listen to Microsoft's strategy, they don't care if the X-box breaks even. Put it this way: Through the last financial cycle, counting sales of hardware and games, Microsoft has lost half a billion dollars on the X-box. If you read one of the earlier replies that said $10 a copy royalties for a $50 game, and Microsoft was losing between 100-150 a console at the start of the X-box's system life, it would take 10-15 games just to break even. Attach rate is also only counting first few months sales... over the long term of the console, it's expected most people would buy the 10-15 games. Plus eventually the prices should become cheap enough to produce the console they get a profit from it at the end of the system's lifespan. So since Microsoft has lost so much money, it does signal infact that it does take a lot for them to break even.
Don't tell me we're back to this. Your statement is simply not true at all. X-box and Ps2 have been sold at a loss, but the Nintendo Gamecube, Gameboy Advance, and the Gameboy Advance SP have NEVER during their entire life cycles yet been sold for a loss whatsoever. Nintendo is making the Gamecube's right now for only about $50, so even giving away a free game, they still make over $50 a console sold in profit.
The original Gameboy Advance, they were able to lower the cost point of that down so low that they reduced the price of the system when it was still selling like hotcakes. I may be wrong, but I don't think any manufacterer has ever done anything like that before. That would have been like Microsoft selling Halo for $20 after it hit a million copies sold.
The GBA SP is still selling at a profit and always has.
Also, your post makes it seem like you're saying that selling games is pure profit, but it's not. Of a $50 game, between $2.50 and $5 goes to the store that sold it, another $20 or so to the company whose console it's sold for, then the rest back to the developer, to cover the cost of production, design, and manufactering.
And losses for the two consoles being sold at a loss are supposed to currently be over $50... so no, one game does not make up for selling a console at a loss. Normally, It is 6-8 games that is considered the point for breaking even.
I have the wavebird, the one made directly by Nintendo, and the only problems I've ever had as an issue with it and latency is if I'm at somebody's house and they have a very cheaply made wireless phone. There are knockoffs of the wavebird that from what I understand, have not gone anywhere near the ease of use and juse quality that the wavebirds have.
It's actually very likely that with Nintendo's next console, the system will use something that would be equivilant to a 4th generation wavebird. (First being the originals, second being 900Mhz range, 3rd being 2.4Ghz range, 4th being 3 maybe). But prolly still have a port to plug in wired controllers or additional 3rd party devices. Considering all the accolades Nintendo has received for the wavebird, it would be very likely for them to do this. Plus they could end up coming out cheaper for the controllers (with rumble that doesn't suck as much battery life) since they'd have the reciever bit built right into the console.
They could also feasably go like the GBA SP and have the controllers for it come with a high powered rechargable battery, and have it where the controllers could just dock with the next system (I'm thinking like how electric toothbrushes can charge without ever having any metal on metal pieces), or directly plug a cable into the controllers when they weren't in use.
There's only two problems with this thought.
1) The GBA player for the gamecube, is only supposed to top out at $50
2) The GBA SP is making money. You don't go bundling a complete seperate system with another for $150 when one of the systems is consistantly still selling out at $99 a pop.
The closest chance to this happening would be to bundle the Gamecube with an original GBA, since there would be a lower price difference and all, and more incentive for some to buy that bundle.
Sorry dude, but at least in the US and Japan, Nintendo has never sold the Gamecube or Gameboy advance at a loss. That's actually why the GBA was lowered to $80 originally, cause they were producing them cheap enough that they could make a decent profit even at an $80 sale point.
Microsoft and Sony were selling the PS2 and X-box at about a $150 loss at the beginning of their consoles lifecycles. Sony, having been doing it for longer, brought the price down (though prolly still losing money), while Microsoft has had to lower their prices earlier to keep up with Sony, thus keeping the rather large margin of production costs.
My name is Rinda Vas from American greetings, and I am sending you this cease and desist order based on a posting you made on Slashdot.org regarding the email address Rinda.Vas@amgreetings.com. This posting of the email address is a violation of our trademarks, and we'll have to ask you to stop. Thank you
Rinda Vas
Rinda.Vas@amgreetings.com
When did X-box sales pick up in Europe. I remember back in May when the GCN was released in Europe. It had more pre-orders for the entire EU than X-boxen sold to date. Face it though, Europe and Australia are just not big markets for games as compared to the US and Japan. (also look at the fact that 2 million dollars for a movie is really good in Australia during theater release).
Actually, you're wrong in this. The Gamecube started selling in Europe 2 months after the X-Box. Sad part was, in all of Europe there were more pre-ordered Gamecubes than there were X-box's sold.
Actually, Microsoft didn't buy only half of Rare. Rare was putting itself on the auction block, and offered the opportunity to Nintendo to buy the other 51 percent that it didn't own. Nintendo decided that since Rare was taking so long for games that weren't of great of quality as PD, Goldeneye, and the DKC games on the Super Nintendo, to drop it. When Microsoft decided to purchase Rare, Nintendo sold it's 49% share in the company to them, and the two halves were bought for $500 million. Don't know how that really divided though between Rare and Nintendo.
Okay, I'm wondering how many people are ignoring the obvious here. China among other countries are notorious for things such as piracy and such. If you think about it, so far the Gamecube is the only system that's escaped real piracy and modding. If you release a gamecube into a country like this, you'll have more people trying to copy things. So if you look at it that way, it prevents piracy by not giving the piraters a chance to make copies illegally, since the Chinese government wont do anything to stop them anyway.
Perhaps paying farmers for the crops they have to throw away will make more of them more willing to grow more food for feeding hungry people?
Um, just wait 5 more months and play splinter cell on the gamecube... Resident Evil 0 (and eventually 4) on gamecube... Metroid Prime (currently looking to be rated as the game of the year, all systems) on Gamecube... Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (currently looking to rates as the best game of all time) on Gamecube in March. Everybody right now is still about eye-candy, I would have thought that an article that suggests games should target mature audiences would mean that mature audiences would rather have substance than boobies. Too bad I was wrong, huh?
With all this talk about hacking so you can disable x-boxes from the XBL system, if M$ notices a lot coming from the same IP address, why can't they just invalidate the XBL account number (granted, I don't know if they even keep track of account numbers yet)... make people have to pay for the service again....
Though that would be funny to see a script that gives MS your credit card number for a new account, change the MAC and serial, and repeat. MS certainly wouldn't mind whatsoever.