installing 2.1 over your previous 2.0.0a resets all your settings--including graphics, audio, and most importantly binds. so back up your binds if you've got anything of note to save.
unfortunately i updated at midnight last night and haven't had time to try it out, other than discovering that everything had been reset...
is A Game of the Throne. one of those military conquest / diplomacy / resource management type games (based on George R.R. Martin's excellent fantasy book series, A Song of Fire and Ice). It's quite fun, and a total time waster. With 3 players, games take upwards of 4 or 5 hours. I haven't played it yet with a bigger group. My wife, who doesn't really like things fantasy or military, had fun playing it. Biggest draw is that there's no dice throwing and what random effects there are affect everyone, so on one can feel cheated by a lucky moment.
There are tons of restaurants all across America and they all generate waste oil.
While it is true that there are quite a few restaurants in the U.S., I think it is safe to say that there are at least a lot more cars than restuarants (i'd say by at least an order of magnitude). I'd further imagine that if everyone switched to biodiesel, used cooking oil wouldn't even be able to supply all of the workers at a given restaurant (owner, shift managers, bus boys, janitors, etc., etc.)
Although I can't find decent statistics on how much waste oil is produced, one website claims that McDonald's produces 360 liters per month. Which is 95 gallons of diesel, assuming perfect efficiency. Given that McDs probably has 5 or 6 people per shift, 3 shifts a day, that's 18 different employees at a minimum, which comes out to 5 gallons per month per employee. Certainly not enough to supply just the employees at one company or even Mad Max...
wouldn't this still have required 2 gamecubes though? 1 to emulate the gba and the other to "host" the actual GC game? it still would have been cheaper to just go out and buy another GBA, unless you had 2 GCs lying around...
but i agree it is a cool thing to know. even if it is overkill. (i just wish the gba player was cheaper, i'd pick one up)
if Nintendo can launch a next gen console that is backwards compatible with the GC, then I think they'll be in great shape. I don't know what their plans regarding compatibility are, but maintaining it is definitely a good thing (e.g., phenomenal PS2 sales).
As for developers and a slew of games, they haven't been doing half-bad in this department. In the past couple of years, they've made deals with some of the bigger names and franchises (getting some Final Fantasy, some Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid), so developers definitely are seeing potential in the big N. Getting to market first with a new console and an exclusive or 2 from a big name (say a Mario game plus an established 3rd party franchise) would really push Nintendo along...
And finally the price, if I'm recalling correctly, Nintendo almost always has the cheapest hardware, both on launch (weren't PS2 and Xbox ~250-300 while GC was closer to 200?) and throughtout the sales cycle, so there's not much worry there.
apparently if one digs through the website deep enough you'll find the FAQ, which indicates the "game" comes with a heart rate monitor (one would think this would be prominently announced, as it's a big thing setting this apart from an exercise DVD). I presume this is where the game part comes it. You increase your heart rate for 20 minutes a certain amount, and you unlock new content. some of the the screenshots at the website support this (the bottom one, for instance).
So, unlike DDR or other games, you really aren't playing anything or trying to accomplish anything, other than exercising along with a game; with the heart monitor measuring your progress and unlocking new content. so, it's a really personalized exercise DVD.
I think they already do. Or at least some game makers take the additional step to do so. Checking out the ESRB rating for Warcraft III (bottom of page), you'll note it got a T for blood and violence. Checking out the ESRB for Metroid Prime, and it's a T but no mention of specifics. So there are some thorough developers/publishers and some not so thorough developers/publishers. (To Nintendo's credit, when you try to access any game with T or higher rating on their website, a warning will pop letting you know the rating and asking if you want to continue.)
What will happen is Lieberman and other congress-types will hold more hearings and eventually the ESRB will cave and be forced to enforce their ratings both at the publisher side (i.e., more acting like Blizzard) and at the retail side (i.e., don't sell the M games to children). Hopefully, it won't make it fully into the realm of regulation. (both the music and movie industries averted that, no? I know the MPAA rating system is voluntary, and I presume the parental warning stickers on albums were a self-regulated thing, rather than a governmental mandate)
Parents, no matter how diligent, can not watch over their children every second of the day.
No, but when the kid comes home from playing GTA at the friend's house and says "Parent, I really want to get this game": Parent says "No."
The author of the article presents this situation, with his nephew now wanting to get this game that he played at a friends house. However, rather than take it the final step (i.e., parent saying no), the author goes into "hey game makers, change your games" land. Obviously parents can't be there 100% of the time, but when they are there they have to be a parent. And being a parent means saying no, quite frequently. Why the author doesn't see this, I don't know.
Kids are exposed to all sorts of "bad" things and parents do their best to mitigate any real or supposed damage by setting barriers, guidelines, rules and having discussions with their children.
It this author wants a better target to go after, why not start with soda / junk food vending machines at our schools. Kids spend more time in school than they do anywhere else (including playing video games). And childhood obesity is, without any doubt, a bigger problem than violent video games.
i agree. there's really nothing wrong with Friday nights, as long as there is consistency. Its when TV shows get moved mid season to a different night that viewership really plummets. (like when Babylon 5 was switched weekly to different nights)
X-Files was on Friday nights for several years and it slowly moved from cult favorite to mainstream hit. If I recall correctly, the reason it was moved to Sunday was to make room for Millenium, and that was 3 or 4 years after X-files debuted.
Re:Could You Choose Beta Release Medicine?
on
Cure for Cancer?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
A friend of mine is essentially doing this (although in a very much DIY manner). He was recently profiled on NPR's All Things Considered. Basically: med student develops incredibly rare nasal cancer which is almost always fatal. No one's doing much research on it, so the guy decides to research it himself, by first trying to grow his cancer cells in the lab. he's nowhere near the "try cure on self stage", but one has to start somewhere.
The weird thing about the MS purchase of Rare: Their first-post buyout game was released for the GBA. In fact, on their release schedule since 2003, they have more games for the GBA than they do X-BOX (4 nintendo games to 3 xbox games).
Given how slowly Rare release titles, MS must be in this for the long haul (it was a $375 million purchase), as it'll take years before Rare even comes close to selling that much product. particularly if they've got a significant portion of their workforce developing Nintendo handheld games...
except that the US apparently sanctioned the metric system in 1886, and the American Bureau of Standards made the metric system it's standard in 1964. (nice timeline here ). There've been various attempts to further adopt in more recent history, but basically the US doesn't want to change. The metric system is nonexistant as far as general use is concerned. The only "off the top of my head" metric use I can think of are 2 L bottles of coke. nothing else gets metric treatment.
its not. This confused me as well. But I was able to open and play the "incredisize" video from the offical site just fine with no iTunes installed on my machine.
They did but contractually they were obliged to release a few more movies with Disney. The Incredibles is one of them. The in-production Cars is another. And that might be it (or maybe one more). One other aspect of the split (if i recall correctly) is that Disney retains rights to produce sequels to all the films released through them (so Disney could make their own Toy Story 3, if they chose).
That this case is about PATRIOT is pretty much irrelevant to the story.
I think it's exactly the opposite. How many other laws can you challenge in court, but not be legally allowed to admit you are challenging? There's something scary about this particular aspect of the case/law. Laws shoudn't have provisions that prohibit you from talking about them; particularly when its a summary of a portion of that law.
i'd definitely worry about a tainted jury pool after they read this paragraph (which is one of the 2 censored): "The provision under challenge allows an FBI agent to write a letter demanding the disclosure of the name, screen names, addresses, e-mail header information, and other sensitive information held by 'electronic communication service providers.' ".
Gimme a break. This isn't a taintable statement. It doesn't use language that can be construed to have have bias. It's about as objective a paragraph as possible. "We're challenging this provision which states this." There is something wrong when our government says you can't even admit what exactly you're challenging. (or even if you're challening it)
In the movie industry, the pattern these days seems to be for the big "blockbuster" products to be delivered on-time.
Oh, I don't know. doing a quick google "delayed movie releases" search turns up that the release of Blade was delayed. Against the Ropes (that Meg Ryan movie) was delayed quite a while before it was released. Apparently the new Miyazaki film is going to be delayed. Sky Captain is being delayed. And here's a whole list of films from 1999 that had their release schedules changed (with a number of them including "behind schedule" in the reason).
So, its a bit unfair to criticize the game industry for being amateurish, while denying it happens in the movie industry. Perhaps all of the Lord of the Rings films were released on schedule, but a quick search for a recent semi-blockbuster, Kill Bill 2, shows that it was initially scheduled to be released in February and was pushed back to April.
They spent too long on HL2. It should have been released already. They've missed the boat bigtime.
Funny thing about this, the original HL was released about a year too late. and it was released on a modified Q1 engine (when Q2 had been out for a year or so). And yet, 5 years later, here we are still playing it and the various mods that have been released for it.
Valve hit gold with HL. More importantly, they hit platinum when they decided to have very open exchanges with the mod makers and the gaming community. There's reason a reason you find an order of magnitude more players on HL than any other game (you add up the total number of people playing the 39 games below HL on gamespy, and you're still less than the number playing HL).
Will it be worth the wait? Probably. Can it live up to the hype? Probably not. The "amazement" of HL can't be duplicated. An intro level on a train just won't be as exciting the 2nd time around no matter how much more beautiful it is. But it sounds like there's enough fun new toys (physics) that we're gonna be very entertained. Since it sounds like its shipping with most (or all) current mods ported over to the new engine, every HL gamer will upgrade.
And when will we stop hearing hype about it?
The funny thing about this comment, is that HL2 wasn't even official until this time last year. Valve basically dropped the bomb at E3 by announcing the game. So any hype that has been generated is only a year old (or was been fan driven by unsubstantiated speculation prior to any official announcement).
will any game be available on it? There's 3 different "informative" links in this story; 2 going to interviews. Not 1 mentions a single game title. You get a bunch of free titles when you buy it with "support [for] all current and future Windows-based titles" in the future. Yeah, that's real promising. A game system where they can't even name a single game. Not even a "support for such games as Half-Life, Quake, Warcraft 2, or Spider Solitaire". Granted, they've got lots of time to announce games, but if you want to generate hype, it's all about games, games, games (particularly when all you're selling is a pc clone)
Interesting. Blizz South has WoW to demo, as well as Starcraft Ghost which they are advising on, but nothing from Blizzard North. It's been like 3 years or so since Diablo 2 came out, and they've been awfully quiet since then. Granted they did lose all of their top staff from that office, but one would think that by now they'd have something to tease us with.
Diddy Kong Racing was ungodly hard. I find that many kids games have this problem - they make the game hard for the playtesters, and forget that their target audience is 8-year olds.
I loved Diddy Kong Racing (moreso than the various Mario Kart incarnations). I found it challenging but not overly hard. I unlocked most of the content, but could never beat the clock on many of the tracks, so I never got one of the racers. The problem with Diddy Kong vs Mario Kart, was that DK relied more heavily on one's skill, and the seasoned players would invariably dominate the less experienced in multiplayer (whereas MK has the random power-ups that favor the players not in first place and attempt to equalize things).
The real hard Nintendo game is F-Zero GX. That's just an insane racer. I can't get past the third or forth level in the story mode, nor can I complete some of the tracks with anything resembling skill. It's just impossible and I've given up. The frustrating part is that there is no ramping up of difficulty or training of any sort to prepare you for how hard it actually is. You're just thrown in and stuck on endless repetition until you have maybe figured out how to beat a track with a specific driver. Which all goes out the window if you want to try someone else.
computer gaming as a mass market spectator sport probably won't succeed for the exact reasons you cited: lots of action spread out with no obvious focal point. However, I think post-game editing can make viewing computer games an enjoyable pasttime. An initial run through of the playing field and commentary on what to look for in specific zone. Some nice split screen action showing how each team is advancing; full screen shots with alternating point of view at conflicts, etc. Essentially turn the game into a coherent cinematic, emphasizing the escalating tension between the teams, and perhaps you've got something. The G4 channel has a show that does this to an extent and it's mildly interesting. Perhaps with a snazzier format and some better editting it would be more enjoyable. Sure, it moves it from a live spectator sport into more of a TV show, but it's probably a lot more interesting. Unless you had some really on knowledgable "camera" people who knew what likely conflicts were going to occur and where (which really isn't too hard), and essentially broadcast the game like a live sporting event (where you hopefully have a camera on the good action and someone in charge switching camera views as necessary).
back in the day of windows 95, I went shopping for games and saw the Warcraft 2 expansion at an Electronics Botique in the mall for $29. Was thinking of buying it, but I delayed the purchase. Later in the day I went to both Fry's and another computer mega store (CompUSA, I think). Fry's had it for $19. The other megastore had it for $9. Nine dollars is a price you really can't pass up, particularly when it's one-third the price somewhere else.
Although most stores sell things at about the same price, EBgames.com occasionally has the $10 store credit coupon on major releases. And one will occasionally run into the store that is selling a particular title cheaper than everyone else (these are usually not the nation-wide mega-retailers so finding adverts for these deals is nearly impossible.)
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installing 2.1 over your previous 2.0.0a resets all your settings--including graphics, audio, and most importantly binds. so back up your binds if you've got anything of note to save.
unfortunately i updated at midnight last night and haven't had time to try it out, other than discovering that everything had been reset...
is A Game of the Throne. one of those military conquest / diplomacy / resource management type games (based on George R.R. Martin's excellent fantasy book series, A Song of Fire and Ice). It's quite fun, and a total time waster. With 3 players, games take upwards of 4 or 5 hours. I haven't played it yet with a bigger group. My wife, who doesn't really like things fantasy or military, had fun playing it. Biggest draw is that there's no dice throwing and what random effects there are affect everyone, so on one can feel cheated by a lucky moment.
There are tons of restaurants all across America and they all generate waste oil.
While it is true that there are quite a few restaurants in the U.S., I think it is safe to say that there are at least a lot more cars than restuarants (i'd say by at least an order of magnitude). I'd further imagine that if everyone switched to biodiesel, used cooking oil wouldn't even be able to supply all of the workers at a given restaurant (owner, shift managers, bus boys, janitors, etc., etc.)
Although I can't find decent statistics on how much waste oil is produced, one website claims that McDonald's produces 360 liters per month. Which is 95 gallons of diesel, assuming perfect efficiency. Given that McDs probably has 5 or 6 people per shift, 3 shifts a day, that's 18 different employees at a minimum, which comes out to 5 gallons per month per employee. Certainly not enough to supply just the employees at one company or even Mad Max...
while the metroid colored SP is nice, the NES edition is retro cool. (i hadn't even heard of it until i ran across it while shopping yesterday).
wouldn't this still have required 2 gamecubes though? 1 to emulate the gba and the other to "host" the actual GC game? it still would have been cheaper to just go out and buy another GBA, unless you had 2 GCs lying around...
but i agree it is a cool thing to know. even if it is overkill. (i just wish the gba player was cheaper, i'd pick one up)
if Nintendo can launch a next gen console that is backwards compatible with the GC, then I think they'll be in great shape. I don't know what their plans regarding compatibility are, but maintaining it is definitely a good thing (e.g., phenomenal PS2 sales).
As for developers and a slew of games, they haven't been doing half-bad in this department. In the past couple of years, they've made deals with some of the bigger names and franchises (getting some Final Fantasy, some Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid), so developers definitely are seeing potential in the big N. Getting to market first with a new console and an exclusive or 2 from a big name (say a Mario game plus an established 3rd party franchise) would really push Nintendo along...
And finally the price, if I'm recalling correctly, Nintendo almost always has the cheapest hardware, both on launch (weren't PS2 and Xbox ~250-300 while GC was closer to 200?) and throughtout the sales cycle, so there's not much worry there.
apparently if one digs through the website deep enough you'll find the FAQ, which indicates the "game" comes with a heart rate monitor (one would think this would be prominently announced, as it's a big thing setting this apart from an exercise DVD). I presume this is where the game part comes it. You increase your heart rate for 20 minutes a certain amount, and you unlock new content. some of the the screenshots at the website support this (the bottom one, for instance).
So, unlike DDR or other games, you really aren't playing anything or trying to accomplish anything, other than exercising along with a game; with the heart monitor measuring your progress and unlocking new content. so, it's a really personalized exercise DVD.
regarding ESRB and putting specifics on the box:
I think they already do. Or at least some game makers take the additional step to do so. Checking out the ESRB rating for Warcraft III (bottom of page), you'll note it got a T for blood and violence. Checking out the ESRB for Metroid Prime, and it's a T but no mention of specifics. So there are some thorough developers/publishers and some not so thorough developers/publishers. (To Nintendo's credit, when you try to access any game with T or higher rating on their website, a warning will pop letting you know the rating and asking if you want to continue.)
What will happen is Lieberman and other congress-types will hold more hearings and eventually the ESRB will cave and be forced to enforce their ratings both at the publisher side (i.e., more acting like Blizzard) and at the retail side (i.e., don't sell the M games to children). Hopefully, it won't make it fully into the realm of regulation. (both the music and movie industries averted that, no? I know the MPAA rating system is voluntary, and I presume the parental warning stickers on albums were a self-regulated thing, rather than a governmental mandate)
Parents, no matter how diligent, can not watch over their children every second of the day.
No, but when the kid comes home from playing GTA at the friend's house and says "Parent, I really want to get this game": Parent says "No."
The author of the article presents this situation, with his nephew now wanting to get this game that he played at a friends house. However, rather than take it the final step (i.e., parent saying no), the author goes into "hey game makers, change your games" land. Obviously parents can't be there 100% of the time, but when they are there they have to be a parent. And being a parent means saying no, quite frequently. Why the author doesn't see this, I don't know.
Kids are exposed to all sorts of "bad" things and parents do their best to mitigate any real or supposed damage by setting barriers, guidelines, rules and having discussions with their children.
It this author wants a better target to go after, why not start with soda / junk food vending machines at our schools. Kids spend more time in school than they do anywhere else (including playing video games). And childhood obesity is, without any doubt, a bigger problem than violent video games.
i agree. there's really nothing wrong with Friday nights, as long as there is consistency. Its when TV shows get moved mid season to a different night that viewership really plummets. (like when Babylon 5 was switched weekly to different nights)
X-Files was on Friday nights for several years and it slowly moved from cult favorite to mainstream hit. If I recall correctly, the reason it was moved to Sunday was to make room for Millenium, and that was 3 or 4 years after X-files debuted.
A friend of mine is essentially doing this (although in a very much DIY manner). He was recently profiled on NPR's All Things Considered. Basically: med student develops incredibly rare nasal cancer which is almost always fatal. No one's doing much research on it, so the guy decides to research it himself, by first trying to grow his cancer cells in the lab. he's nowhere near the "try cure on self stage", but one has to start somewhere.
You'd better call it something else to avoid copyright infringement.
yes, like Sack of flour, Heart of Gold
The weird thing about the MS purchase of Rare: Their first-post buyout game was released for the GBA. In fact, on their release schedule since 2003, they have more games for the GBA than they do X-BOX (4 nintendo games to 3 xbox games).
Given how slowly Rare release titles, MS must be in this for the long haul (it was a $375 million purchase), as it'll take years before Rare even comes close to selling that much product. particularly if they've got a significant portion of their workforce developing Nintendo handheld games...
except that the US apparently sanctioned the metric system in 1886, and the American Bureau of Standards made the metric system it's standard in 1964. (nice timeline here ). There've been various attempts to further adopt in more recent history, but basically the US doesn't want to change. The metric system is nonexistant as far as general use is concerned. The only "off the top of my head" metric use I can think of are 2 L bottles of coke. nothing else gets metric treatment.
its not. This confused me as well. But I was able to open and play the "incredisize" video from the offical site just fine with no iTunes installed on my machine.
They did but contractually they were obliged to release a few more movies with Disney. The Incredibles is one of them. The in-production Cars is another. And that might be it (or maybe one more). One other aspect of the split (if i recall correctly) is that Disney retains rights to produce sequels to all the films released through them (so Disney could make their own Toy Story 3, if they chose).
That this case is about PATRIOT is pretty much irrelevant to the story.
I think it's exactly the opposite. How many other laws can you challenge in court, but not be legally allowed to admit you are challenging? There's something scary about this particular aspect of the case/law. Laws shoudn't have provisions that prohibit you from talking about them; particularly when its a summary of a portion of that law.
i'd definitely worry about a tainted jury pool after they read this paragraph (which is one of the 2 censored): "The provision under challenge allows an FBI agent to write a letter demanding the disclosure of the name, screen names, addresses, e-mail header information, and other sensitive information held by 'electronic communication service providers.' ".
Gimme a break. This isn't a taintable statement. It doesn't use language that can be construed to have have bias. It's about as objective a paragraph as possible. "We're challenging this provision which states this." There is something wrong when our government says you can't even admit what exactly you're challenging. (or even if you're challening it)
In the movie industry, the pattern these days seems to be for the big "blockbuster" products to be delivered on-time.
Oh, I don't know. doing a quick google "delayed movie releases" search turns up that the release of Blade was delayed. Against the Ropes (that Meg Ryan movie) was delayed quite a while before it was released. Apparently the new Miyazaki film is going to be delayed. Sky Captain is being delayed. And here's a whole list of films from 1999 that had their release schedules changed (with a number of them including "behind schedule" in the reason).
So, its a bit unfair to criticize the game industry for being amateurish, while denying it happens in the movie industry. Perhaps all of the Lord of the Rings films were released on schedule, but a quick search for a recent semi-blockbuster, Kill Bill 2, shows that it was initially scheduled to be released in February and was pushed back to April.
They spent too long on HL2. It should have been released already. They've missed the boat bigtime.
Funny thing about this, the original HL was released about a year too late. and it was released on a modified Q1 engine (when Q2 had been out for a year or so). And yet, 5 years later, here we are still playing it and the various mods that have been released for it.
Valve hit gold with HL. More importantly, they hit platinum when they decided to have very open exchanges with the mod makers and the gaming community. There's reason a reason you find an order of magnitude more players on HL than any other game (you add up the total number of people playing the 39 games below HL on gamespy, and you're still less than the number playing HL).
Will it be worth the wait? Probably. Can it live up to the hype? Probably not. The "amazement" of HL can't be duplicated. An intro level on a train just won't be as exciting the 2nd time around no matter how much more beautiful it is. But it sounds like there's enough fun new toys (physics) that we're gonna be very entertained. Since it sounds like its shipping with most (or all) current mods ported over to the new engine, every HL gamer will upgrade.
And when will we stop hearing hype about it?
The funny thing about this comment, is that HL2 wasn't even official until this time last year. Valve basically dropped the bomb at E3 by announcing the game. So any hype that has been generated is only a year old (or was been fan driven by unsubstantiated speculation prior to any official announcement).
will any game be available on it? There's 3 different "informative" links in this story; 2 going to interviews. Not 1 mentions a single game title. You get a bunch of free titles when you buy it with "support [for] all current and future Windows-based titles" in the future. Yeah, that's real promising. A game system where they can't even name a single game. Not even a "support for such games as Half-Life, Quake, Warcraft 2, or Spider Solitaire". Granted, they've got lots of time to announce games, but if you want to generate hype, it's all about games, games, games (particularly when all you're selling is a pc clone)
Interesting. Blizz South has WoW to demo, as well as Starcraft Ghost which they are advising on, but nothing from Blizzard North. It's been like 3 years or so since Diablo 2 came out, and they've been awfully quiet since then. Granted they did lose all of their top staff from that office, but one would think that by now they'd have something to tease us with.
Diddy Kong Racing was ungodly hard. I find that many kids games have this problem - they make the game hard for the playtesters, and forget that their target audience is 8-year olds.
I loved Diddy Kong Racing (moreso than the various Mario Kart incarnations). I found it challenging but not overly hard. I unlocked most of the content, but could never beat the clock on many of the tracks, so I never got one of the racers. The problem with Diddy Kong vs Mario Kart, was that DK relied more heavily on one's skill, and the seasoned players would invariably dominate the less experienced in multiplayer (whereas MK has the random power-ups that favor the players not in first place and attempt to equalize things).
The real hard Nintendo game is F-Zero GX. That's just an insane racer. I can't get past the third or forth level in the story mode, nor can I complete some of the tracks with anything resembling skill. It's just impossible and I've given up. The frustrating part is that there is no ramping up of difficulty or training of any sort to prepare you for how hard it actually is. You're just thrown in and stuck on endless repetition until you have maybe figured out how to beat a track with a specific driver. Which all goes out the window if you want to try someone else.
computer gaming as a mass market spectator sport probably won't succeed for the exact reasons you cited: lots of action spread out with no obvious focal point. However, I think post-game editing can make viewing computer games an enjoyable pasttime. An initial run through of the playing field and commentary on what to look for in specific zone. Some nice split screen action showing how each team is advancing; full screen shots with alternating point of view at conflicts, etc. Essentially turn the game into a coherent cinematic, emphasizing the escalating tension between the teams, and perhaps you've got something. The G4 channel has a show that does this to an extent and it's mildly interesting. Perhaps with a snazzier format and some better editting it would be more enjoyable. Sure, it moves it from a live spectator sport into more of a TV show, but it's probably a lot more interesting. Unless you had some really on knowledgable "camera" people who knew what likely conflicts were going to occur and where (which really isn't too hard), and essentially broadcast the game like a live sporting event (where you hopefully have a camera on the good action and someone in charge switching camera views as necessary).
back in the day of windows 95, I went shopping for games and saw the Warcraft 2 expansion at an Electronics Botique in the mall for $29. Was thinking of buying it, but I delayed the purchase. Later in the day I went to both Fry's and another computer mega store (CompUSA, I think). Fry's had it for $19. The other megastore had it for $9. Nine dollars is a price you really can't pass up, particularly when it's one-third the price somewhere else.
Although most stores sell things at about the same price, EBgames.com occasionally has the $10 store credit coupon on major releases. And one will occasionally run into the store that is selling a particular title cheaper than everyone else (these are usually not the nation-wide mega-retailers so finding adverts for these deals is nearly impossible.)