Space Invaders A very popular glitch was to hold the reset button while turning the Atari 2600 console with Space Invaders in it. It gave your single-player tank a double-shot. I'm no longer convinced it was unintentional.
Mountain King (originally by Imagic) There was an accidental "super jump" in the game. If you timed a jump just right, by releasing the stick for a split-second and then hit "up" again, the man would make a half-jump followed by a jump that would fly up into the air until it hit something. This caused the game to move into ROM and RAM addresses creating a "sky world" to explore.
On Leaderboards in general, "rollover glitches abound." Mario Kart on the Wii had rollover glitches to the timer, making them patch the game and reset the leaderboards. I noticed the more recent "Cuboid" on PSN has the same problem! Both the number of moves and the timer rollover to zero making it possible that somebody willing to make 1000 moves and wait 99:99 minutes (or whatever the maxes are) to get the top leaderboard position.
I care about my gamerscore, but only because all of those achievements were my own. It's very useful when comparing your score on an individual game. I only have one 1000 commercial game, King Kong, because beating the game once scores all 1000. Anyway, higher gamerscore while not actually earning them will totally skew your True Skill rating. It's not an advantage at all.
Meanwhile, the ever-increasing amount of games is making the score useless as a metric. It doesn't really have much value anymore.
I know that they make the cars and all, but they don't make us drive them. A long tradition of cars, over 100 years, has molded our society to need them. If you cut all commuting distances by 25%, you will cut automobile emissions from commutes 25%. Our cities are built wrong. If we had taken a clue from Europe, cities would be built around mass-transit. Too late! We need the cars, so the lawsuit is impractical.
For an example, Maryland, where I live passed a law to require locks on all firearms. So now, most people by their hunting guns out-of-state. If you get what you want, CA, then your car dealers will go bankrupt as people go to Nevada to gamble and buy a car.
Now, why can't the country sue California for factory emissions and other pollutants? If they win their car-suit, they will set a precedent that will remove even more money from the state's taxpayers in countersuits.
I played SFIIHF on the xbox360 last night. I was on the east coast vs. someone on the west coast. No noticeable lag. However, an earlier bout of unknown distance had a couple of choppy animations. It was a light night after 1am EDT, though. It's probably busier around 9pm EDT.
The arcade game is perfect. It plays at the same speed as Hyper Fighting. The controls were very responsive when I used the analog stick. You can set the buttons anyway you like. I think negative reviews on the controller are based on personal preference. You may find some characters easier with the D-Pad, and some easier to control with the analog.
Live Arcade has been receiving way too much non-constructive negative feedback. It really seems like a bashing! Just remember, this is an 80s game!
Dr. Phil would say "grow up and give the crap away." The problem is that collectors are often with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). That's a treatable problem that has nothing to do with "growing up." The article also touches on the elements of gambling addiction. If you have a problem collecting too many things, a therapist can easily determine if you're OCD and to what degree.
When you get an income, it gets income-taxed in the USA unless it is exempt. The fake-goods trailer was correct by reporting this income. I personally feel it should be taxed as realized capital gains, since it is worth nothing until sold for actual money. You should also be able to deduct the game cost. So, if game price is $50, and monthly fee is $10, and you sell something for $150 after 3 months, you've realized a gain $70. Plus, it is probably the seller's labor that is being traded (play-for-hire), not the virtual goods.
You point out an interesting demographic, the Early Adopter. Early Adopters either have more disposable income or have a credit card problem. Also, the timing of bringing out more arcade games in future lulls of game releases will help the trend, too.
That seemed to surprise a few people, who insisted I had to finish it, to see the ending. Now, instantly I could draw the parallel to books or a movie. If you stop reading a book, that doesn't change what happens in the story.
When you stop reading a book, it does indeed change the story--for the reader. I refer to The Lady or the Tiger. The point of the story was that it forced you into finishing the story, even if you were happy at leaving it unresolved.
I'm happy to see that the blog author "got it." It was sick to desire to bring a dead person back to life by killing these stately giants. He didn't know anything about the giants, but he was willing to slaughter. It was both selfish and unnatural.
I realize the articles refer to a Japan release. Since the US Dreamcast used market is officially over in Gamestop/EB, this wouldn't be a very good item to buy in the US. Still, perhaps a Flashback-like device would be more appropriate. Hell, give it a cheap 10gb hard drive and make all games downloadable, then license it as a "Phantom."
The article concludes two things about gamers: They react less to graphic images and are more likely to send a loud sound to the loser.
Being "used to" and less affected by violent imagery is not an increase in violent tendencies. That's an improper conclusion. Someone who doesn't react as much to graphic imagery is the type of guy/gal you want by your side when something horrible happens. These are the people who will retain their cool and be able to minimize damage and save lives. These are the people that make great emergency response professionals like police, fire department, and ambulance workers.
Making your opponents suffer from a loud sound after losing a round of whatever is not a violent act. It's an act of ego and competitiveness. Let's face it, if a game has no penalties for losing, the game is BORING! Verbal taunts, visual sneers, cat calls, and even those horn-blasters you hate at football games are meant to "up the ante," make winning worth something, and make losing just a tad more humiliating. With these things in play and taken to heart, the game being played will have more of a "rush" and the competition will be just plain better.
The problem with the referenced study in the referenced article is that you can't go beyond the initial two conconclusions without taking more studies based on the assumptions that are made from the conclusions of the original study. Both of my explainations also assume a lot and would need more study to prove.
Movies will never achieve the kind of art that paintings or sculpture achieve. So it's fair to assume that games will never achieve the kind of art that movies are. They're inherently different.
However, there are books and movies that require your interaction to be complete, so it can't be the interaction aspect of games that denies it art status. Citizen Kane intended the viewer to make his own image of the reporter since he is intentionally obscured throughout the movie. Books typically rely on your imagination to visualize a scene or character by providing you verbal details. Music and Poetry are interpretive by nature. Abstract Art is interpretive, that's why it's abstract.
Is it the journalists fault? I doubt it. Games that are artsy (Rez, Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, Out of this World, anything on orisinal.com) are always pointed out as such. The problem is that most games just simply aren't art. It seems that the more a game focuses on artistic nature, the less it focuses on gameplay, which seems to agree with Ebert's comments.
I don't say it lightly that Roger Ebert is a tad naive when it comes to games. He is merely speaking from his own expertise. I say this because very few films actually qualify as art, and there are many mediocre games that are more artistic than any bad movie. A steadfast sculptor who only deals in real materials could easily state that movies will never achieve art as he knows it.
I'll go see action flicks because I need an escape and enjoy a movie for a change. Those movies tend to make the most money, too. Non-art doesn't necessarily mean not worthwhile.
The article in Forbes is obviously both human interest and nostalgic. I'm not sure why a discrete number of buttons is ever considered in rating a game as "fun" or not. Let's face it, if Pac Man had a button and didn't use it, it'd be less fun. If Galaga didn't have the button, but required you tap the joystick down, it'd be less fun. When the buttons match the required utility of a game, the game interface can then be rendered as "natural." Bank Panic and Missile command had Three that were intuitive and felt right. Defender had tons of buttons, including "Reverse," but it was fun to those who played because they learned how to use the complex setup effectively. Since there's the Atari 2600 comparison, Raiders of the Lost Ark required two joysticks for one player because the controller was inadequate.
I think the real point to walk away with is that a fun game with a bad control scheme is diminished.
If you remember the Divx DVD players at Circuit City, you will remember failure. A technology like that was precisely what Divx did. That leads me to the assumption that they would use the technology for something else. One use is region encoding (post-purchase). Another use may be full-version game demos that can be disabled after X hours unless you buy or rent the game license. And yet another use may be in lieu of a CD Product Key for MMORPG.
I also believe that some smart modder would discover how to bypass the system check altogether.
I've finished SotC the first time thru. Yes, you can continue! You can also try hard mode where the Colossi react more quickly and violently. This review is dead-on. As for the flaws, here's my rundown: 1) Game occasionally crashes (depends on which PS2 you're running--I'm using the original model). 2) Levels-of-detail "pops" at close range. Ideally, these should happen where you can't see it. 3) Some textures aren't anti-aliased. 4) Small color palette, mostly browns and greens.
Oddly enough, I don't think the camera is a problem. I think they left the control as it was because you get better and better at using the camera during battles. Of course, it also cut development time to leave it as-is. The "behind" view and zoom are instrumental. There's also Agro-view. If you call Agro and hold the X button, the camera will look directly at him. If you're battling a Colossus where Agro can't go, you will look directly at the Colossus!
Despite the game is really only 16 boss battles, the entire experience is fun, beautiful, and a bit scary. The sense of large-Colossus and small-hero is done well, right down the the inertia of the huge things. The goal of the game is really to discover what the heck killing these colossi is actually accomplishing.
Overall, a great game that would be even better using another video processor. Always save at the closest altar before attacking the Colossus. It will save you time. I can't wait to see a speed run of this game.
All of Jack Thompson's documented writings and speeches on the subject indicate he has neither a social sciences background nor any experience with programming or playing a computer/video game. They're gonna get a piece of crap. Just stating the obvious.
The used games are higher than EB or Gamestop. They don't have the pulse on the market and sell used titles higher than the competition sells them new. They also don't make any attempt at sorting the titles, except by system. This could work if they tweaked it a lot!
If you've ever read any commentary by Christopher Rice in his books, you'd see how much disdain he has for those "pass-the-buck-to-the-author" clauses. Not every writer agrees with that concept! It's a lazy concept, akin to publishing super-offensive ads in a magazine and claiming no responsibility for the ad. Let's face it, the publisher should be responsible for the content they distribute to a certain degree, like publishing errors causing serious misunderstandings.
I don't know about the rest of you, but if she tells me to drink poison in a book, I'm not going to do it.
Pollara's findings are based on a national telephone survey of more than 1,200 Canadians aged 12 and over between June 24 and July 12. The firm says the results are accurate to within plus or minus 2.5 percentage points, 19 out of 20 times.
Environics polled just over 1,000 Canadians aged 18 or over by telephone, and another 1,043 Canadians on-line in May, 2005. It says the findings are accurate to within plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 19 out of 20 times.
Pollara's accuracy rate is 95% score accuracy * 95% of the time, which is and overall accuracy of 90.25%. This means that almost 1 of every 10 scores is inaccurate.
Envionic's accuracy rate is 93.8% score accuracy * 95% of the time, which is and overall accuracy of 89.11%. This means that slightly more than 1 of every 10 scores is inaccurate.
These are unacceptable accuracy rates to apply to the entire country. In other words, don't pass laws based on a non-independent studies that will affect all Canadians and be completely wrong, 1 out of 10 times. It's just not good science.
I think your first impulse, Eden, was the correct one. A garden of Origin surrounded by angels is pretty much how it's described in Genesis, after Adam and Eve get evicted. Cherubim guard Eden with flaming swords. I'm going from memory here, so I hope no one gets technical on me. However, if someone wants to look up the quote....
From TFA: Fully disclosing hidden content accessible as Easter eggs and via cheat codes has always been part of ESRB's explicitly stated requirements when submitting games to be rated.
I wonder what "fully" means? I mean, every cheat code possibility? Like this: If you change color register 1-32, 79, and 101-120 to the color of "flesh," characters will appear naked, but not anatomically naked. How about: if left player LP_YPOS is changed to 0 and right player RP_YPOS is changed to 132, colliding characters will have LP face aligned with RP crotch.
This is a logistical nightmare. Instead, the ESRB will have to accept blanket statements about possible cheat code types. Things like pallette changes, animation reassignment, physics changes, collision detection, hard-drive content hacking, and so on.
On the bright side, it sounds like companies will need to hire new testers. Not to mention be nice to the cheat-device manufacturers.
Most likely, you only need one game and a memory card. The rest is unecessary, especially if you don't want all the titles.
Here's a "honey" offer to their "vinegar" offer. How about core or deluxe XBox360 and $5 off the total price for each game (no duplicates) and controller. The PSP bundles were high-priced, but you got to choose your games. Since the games are by Microsoft and affiliates, they don't have to pay the licensing fee. The MSRP of $59.99 is for licensed games and the bundle games are MSRP $49.99. So $618 - $40 is $568. Hey, I'm paying $30 for the privelege of the bundle!
I think EB will soon see that heavy-handed tactics do not work.
Like the nursery rhyme, the RIAA seems to be putting in a thumb and pulling out a plum and then making the irrational conclusion that "What a good boy am I!"
From the article: According to Bainwol, in turn citing figures from market watcher NPD, 29 per cent of the recorded music obtained by listeners last year came from content copied onto recordable media. Only 16 per cent came from illegal downloads.
I realize NPD estimates shares of markets, but where is 29% from? They clearly didn't count them nor could they know how many CD-R/RW's went towards non-music data. That means they must have done a poll or pulled it out of their ass (instead of a Christmas pie) based on blank media sales. I hope they did a poll, but they will get unreliable results because they'd have to ask if you have any copyright-infringing CD-Rs and RWs.
If I had a company and had a globally-announced product that was edgy and bound to sell millions of copies, why would I even consider the Peaceaholics demands? The demands are very nearly extortion--give up millions of dollars or what? The demands are unrealistic and just plain silly when considered in the appropriately business context.
Slashdot Mirror
Space Invaders
A very popular glitch was to hold the reset button while turning the Atari 2600 console with Space Invaders in it. It gave your single-player tank a double-shot. I'm no longer convinced it was unintentional.
Mountain King (originally by Imagic)
There was an accidental "super jump" in the game. If you timed a jump just right, by releasing the stick for a split-second and then hit "up" again, the man would make a half-jump followed by a jump that would fly up into the air until it hit something. This caused the game to move into ROM and RAM addresses creating a "sky world" to explore.
On Leaderboards in general, "rollover glitches abound." Mario Kart on the Wii had rollover glitches to the timer, making them patch the game and reset the leaderboards. I noticed the more recent "Cuboid" on PSN has the same problem! Both the number of moves and the timer rollover to zero making it possible that somebody willing to make 1000 moves and wait 99:99 minutes (or whatever the maxes are) to get the top leaderboard position.
I care about my gamerscore, but only because all of those achievements were my own. It's very useful when comparing your score on an individual game. I only have one 1000 commercial game, King Kong, because beating the game once scores all 1000. Anyway, higher gamerscore while not actually earning them will totally skew your True Skill rating. It's not an advantage at all.
Meanwhile, the ever-increasing amount of games is making the score useless as a metric. It doesn't really have much value anymore.
I know that they make the cars and all, but they don't make us drive them. A long tradition of cars, over 100 years, has molded our society to need them. If you cut all commuting distances by 25%, you will cut automobile emissions from commutes 25%. Our cities are built wrong. If we had taken a clue from Europe, cities would be built around mass-transit. Too late! We need the cars, so the lawsuit is impractical.
For an example, Maryland, where I live passed a law to require locks on all firearms. So now, most people by their hunting guns out-of-state. If you get what you want, CA, then your car dealers will go bankrupt as people go to Nevada to gamble and buy a car.
Now, why can't the country sue California for factory emissions and other pollutants? If they win their car-suit, they will set a precedent that will remove even more money from the state's taxpayers in countersuits.
You're all correct, my memory is crap. I got the price of the SNES game confused with the year of release. Yes, on initial release, it was $80!
I played SFIIHF on the xbox360 last night. I was on the east coast vs. someone on the west coast. No noticeable lag. However, an earlier bout of unknown distance had a couple of choppy animations. It was a light night after 1am EDT, though. It's probably busier around 9pm EDT.
The arcade game is perfect. It plays at the same speed as Hyper Fighting. The controls were very responsive when I used the analog stick. You can set the buttons anyway you like. I think negative reviews on the controller are based on personal preference. You may find some characters easier with the D-Pad, and some easier to control with the analog.
Live Arcade has been receiving way too much non-constructive negative feedback. It really seems like a bashing! Just remember, this is an 80s game!
Dr. Phil would say "grow up and give the crap away." The problem is that collectors are often with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). That's a treatable problem that has nothing to do with "growing up." The article also touches on the elements of gambling addiction. If you have a problem collecting too many things, a therapist can easily determine if you're OCD and to what degree.
When you get an income, it gets income-taxed in the USA unless it is exempt. The fake-goods trailer was correct by reporting this income. I personally feel it should be taxed as realized capital gains, since it is worth nothing until sold for actual money. You should also be able to deduct the game cost. So, if game price is $50, and monthly fee is $10, and you sell something for $150 after 3 months, you've realized a gain $70. Plus, it is probably the seller's labor that is being traded (play-for-hire), not the virtual goods.
You point out an interesting demographic, the Early Adopter. Early Adopters either have more disposable income or have a credit card problem. Also, the timing of bringing out more arcade games in future lulls of game releases will help the trend, too.
That seemed to surprise a few people, who insisted I had to finish it, to see the ending. Now, instantly I could draw the parallel to books or a movie. If you stop reading a book, that doesn't change what happens in the story.
When you stop reading a book, it does indeed change the story--for the reader. I refer to The Lady or the Tiger. The point of the story was that it forced you into finishing the story, even if you were happy at leaving it unresolved.
I'm happy to see that the blog author "got it." It was sick to desire to bring a dead person back to life by killing these stately giants. He didn't know anything about the giants, but he was willing to slaughter. It was both selfish and unnatural.
I realize the articles refer to a Japan release. Since the US Dreamcast used market is officially over in Gamestop/EB, this wouldn't be a very good item to buy in the US. Still, perhaps a Flashback-like device would be more appropriate. Hell, give it a cheap 10gb hard drive and make all games downloadable, then license it as a "Phantom."
The article concludes two things about gamers: They react less to graphic images and are more likely to send a loud sound to the loser.
Being "used to" and less affected by violent imagery is not an increase in violent tendencies. That's an improper conclusion. Someone who doesn't react as much to graphic imagery is the type of guy/gal you want by your side when something horrible happens. These are the people who will retain their cool and be able to minimize damage and save lives. These are the people that make great emergency response professionals like police, fire department, and ambulance workers.
Making your opponents suffer from a loud sound after losing a round of whatever is not a violent act. It's an act of ego and competitiveness. Let's face it, if a game has no penalties for losing, the game is BORING! Verbal taunts, visual sneers, cat calls, and even those horn-blasters you hate at football games are meant to "up the ante," make winning worth something, and make losing just a tad more humiliating. With these things in play and taken to heart, the game being played will have more of a "rush" and the competition will be just plain better.
The problem with the referenced study in the referenced article is that you can't go beyond the initial two conconclusions without taking more studies based on the assumptions that are made from the conclusions of the original study. Both of my explainations also assume a lot and would need more study to prove.
The big secret is that it caters to the gamergrrl. It's ribbed for her pleasure.
Movies will never achieve the kind of art that paintings or sculpture achieve. So it's fair to assume that games will never achieve the kind of art that movies are. They're inherently different.
However, there are books and movies that require your interaction to be complete, so it can't be the interaction aspect of games that denies it art status. Citizen Kane intended the viewer to make his own image of the reporter since he is intentionally obscured throughout the movie. Books typically rely on your imagination to visualize a scene or character by providing you verbal details. Music and Poetry are interpretive by nature. Abstract Art is interpretive, that's why it's abstract.
Is it the journalists fault? I doubt it. Games that are artsy (Rez, Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, Out of this World, anything on orisinal.com) are always pointed out as such. The problem is that most games just simply aren't art. It seems that the more a game focuses on artistic nature, the less it focuses on gameplay, which seems to agree with Ebert's comments.
I don't say it lightly that Roger Ebert is a tad naive when it comes to games. He is merely speaking from his own expertise. I say this because very few films actually qualify as art, and there are many mediocre games that are more artistic than any bad movie. A steadfast sculptor who only deals in real materials could easily state that movies will never achieve art as he knows it.
I'll go see action flicks because I need an escape and enjoy a movie for a change. Those movies tend to make the most money, too. Non-art doesn't necessarily mean not worthwhile.
The article in Forbes is obviously both human interest and nostalgic. I'm not sure why a discrete number of buttons is ever considered in rating a game as "fun" or not. Let's face it, if Pac Man had a button and didn't use it, it'd be less fun. If Galaga didn't have the button, but required you tap the joystick down, it'd be less fun. When the buttons match the required utility of a game, the game interface can then be rendered as "natural." Bank Panic and Missile command had Three that were intuitive and felt right. Defender had tons of buttons, including "Reverse," but it was fun to those who played because they learned how to use the complex setup effectively. Since there's the Atari 2600 comparison, Raiders of the Lost Ark required two joysticks for one player because the controller was inadequate.
I think the real point to walk away with is that a fun game with a bad control scheme is diminished.
If you remember the Divx DVD players at Circuit City, you will remember failure. A technology like that was precisely what Divx did. That leads me to the assumption that they would use the technology for something else. One use is region encoding (post-purchase). Another use may be full-version game demos that can be disabled after X hours unless you buy or rent the game license. And yet another use may be in lieu of a CD Product Key for MMORPG.
I also believe that some smart modder would discover how to bypass the system check altogether.
I've finished SotC the first time thru. Yes, you can continue! You can also try hard mode where the Colossi react more quickly and violently. This review is dead-on. As for the flaws, here's my rundown:
1) Game occasionally crashes (depends on which PS2 you're running--I'm using the original model).
2) Levels-of-detail "pops" at close range. Ideally, these should happen where you can't see it.
3) Some textures aren't anti-aliased.
4) Small color palette, mostly browns and greens.
Oddly enough, I don't think the camera is a problem. I think they left the control as it was because you get better and better at using the camera during battles. Of course, it also cut development time to leave it as-is. The "behind" view and zoom are instrumental. There's also Agro-view. If you call Agro and hold the X button, the camera will look directly at him. If you're battling a Colossus where Agro can't go, you will look directly at the Colossus!
Despite the game is really only 16 boss battles, the entire experience is fun, beautiful, and a bit scary. The sense of large-Colossus and small-hero is done well, right down the the inertia of the huge things. The goal of the game is really to discover what the heck killing these colossi is actually accomplishing.
Overall, a great game that would be even better using another video processor. Always save at the closest altar before attacking the Colossus. It will save you time. I can't wait to see a speed run of this game.
All of Jack Thompson's documented writings and speeches on the subject indicate he has neither a social sciences background nor any experience with programming or playing a computer/video game. They're gonna get a piece of crap. Just stating the obvious.
The used games are higher than EB or Gamestop. They don't have the pulse on the market and sell used titles higher than the competition sells them new. They also don't make any attempt at sorting the titles, except by system. This could work if they tweaked it a lot!
If you've ever read any commentary by Christopher Rice in his books, you'd see how much disdain he has for those "pass-the-buck-to-the-author" clauses. Not every writer agrees with that concept! It's a lazy concept, akin to publishing super-offensive ads in a magazine and claiming no responsibility for the ad. Let's face it, the publisher should be responsible for the content they distribute to a certain degree, like publishing errors causing serious misunderstandings.
I don't know about the rest of you, but if she tells me to drink poison in a book, I'm not going to do it.
From TFA:
Pollara's findings are based on a national telephone survey of more than 1,200 Canadians aged 12 and over between June 24 and July 12.
The firm says the results are accurate to within plus or minus 2.5 percentage points, 19 out of 20 times.
Environics polled just over 1,000 Canadians aged 18 or over by telephone, and another 1,043 Canadians on-line in May, 2005.
It says the findings are accurate to within plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 19 out of 20 times.
Pollara's accuracy rate is 95% score accuracy * 95% of the time, which is and overall accuracy of 90.25%. This means that almost 1 of every 10 scores is inaccurate.
Envionic's accuracy rate is 93.8% score accuracy * 95% of the time, which is and overall accuracy of 89.11%. This means that slightly more than 1 of every 10 scores is inaccurate.
These are unacceptable accuracy rates to apply to the entire country. In other words, don't pass laws based on a non-independent studies that will affect all Canadians and be completely wrong, 1 out of 10 times. It's just not good science.
I think your first impulse, Eden, was the correct one. A garden of Origin surrounded by angels is pretty much how it's described in Genesis, after Adam and Eve get evicted. Cherubim guard Eden with flaming swords. I'm going from memory here, so I hope no one gets technical on me. However, if someone wants to look up the quote....
From TFA: Fully disclosing hidden content accessible as Easter eggs and via cheat codes has always been part of ESRB's explicitly stated requirements when submitting games to be rated.
I wonder what "fully" means? I mean, every cheat code possibility? Like this: If you change color register 1-32, 79, and 101-120 to the color of "flesh," characters will appear naked, but not anatomically naked. How about: if left player LP_YPOS is changed to 0 and right player RP_YPOS is changed to 132, colliding characters will have LP face aligned with RP crotch.
This is a logistical nightmare. Instead, the ESRB will have to accept blanket statements about possible cheat code types. Things like pallette changes, animation reassignment, physics changes, collision detection, hard-drive content hacking, and so on.
On the bright side, it sounds like companies will need to hire new testers. Not to mention be nice to the cheat-device manufacturers.
Most likely, you only need one game and a memory card. The rest is unecessary, especially if you don't want all the titles.
Here's a "honey" offer to their "vinegar" offer. How about core or deluxe XBox360 and $5 off the total price for each game (no duplicates) and controller. The PSP bundles were high-priced, but you got to choose your games. Since the games are by Microsoft and affiliates, they don't have to pay the licensing fee. The MSRP of $59.99 is for licensed games and the bundle games are MSRP $49.99. So $618 - $40 is $568. Hey, I'm paying $30 for the privelege of the bundle!
I think EB will soon see that heavy-handed tactics do not work.
Like the nursery rhyme, the RIAA seems to be putting in a thumb and pulling out a plum and then making the irrational conclusion that "What a good boy am I!"
From the article: According to Bainwol, in turn citing figures from market watcher NPD, 29 per cent of the recorded music obtained by listeners last year came from content copied onto recordable media. Only 16 per cent came from illegal downloads.
I realize NPD estimates shares of markets, but where is 29% from? They clearly didn't count them nor could they know how many CD-R/RW's went towards non-music data. That means they must have done a poll or pulled it out of their ass (instead of a Christmas pie) based on blank media sales. I hope they did a poll, but they will get unreliable results because they'd have to ask if you have any copyright-infringing CD-Rs and RWs.
When did you stop beating your wife?
If I had a company and had a globally-announced product that was edgy and bound to sell millions of copies, why would I even consider the Peaceaholics demands? The demands are very nearly extortion--give up millions of dollars or what? The demands are unrealistic and just plain silly when considered in the appropriately business context.