The point I find annoying is this- downloads cannot be made across borders easily. I can't download from the JP (japanese) iTunes store without a JP credit card or gift card.
I'm sure Apple would love nothing more than being able to have one store for all countries. This is not Apples fault.
What I was referring to is the fact that you couldn't do that when the iPod first came out. The iPod came in one style, one size, and one color. The Zune comes in three colors. That's more than Apple had.
Second point, that 5 billion lost, does that include revenue from games and Live? Care to give a cite somewhere?
Microsoft does not release numbers for individual products, so no the number is not for just the hardware. Here's links to MS's Earnings Statements for Q4 2004 ($1.21B lost, shows 2003 as $1.19B lost)), Q4 2005 ($.39B lost) and Q4 2006 ($1.26B lost). What you're looking for is results for the division called 'Home and Entertainment'. As far as I'm aware the only quarter that division made money for MS was Q2 2005 ($.08B earned). That was the quarter (Oct-Dec 2004) that included both Christmas 2004 and the release of Halo 2.
I don't think I've ever seen them screw up the 1.85 stuff (it's essentially 16:9)
I have. They don't set the DVD player to know it's hooked up to a widescreen display, so the DVD player does down-conversion and adds in the black bars on the top and bottom creating a 4:3 image and then sending it to a widescreen display. Some screens can detect this and "auto" switch to a zoom mode, but they may not be in the right "mode" to do it (not setup correctly.)
no. he owned over 50% of Pixar before the buyout. he is the largest individual/non-institutional shareholder in Disney, but his holdings are in the single digits somewhere - I don't recall the exact number but around 3% is what I keep thinking.
Well then here goes... 1000 gold = 10 million copper in WOW. 10 million compared to 1 billion is a factor of 100, much closer than the factor of 1,000,000 that 1000g vs 1 billion gil implies.
How much gold per hour can someone in WOW accumulate? How much gil per hour in FFXI? If you earn 1 gold per hour (10,000 copper) and I earn 1,000 gil per hour, does 10 copper = 1 gil? Maybe, but you still have to take local prices of items into account.
What about supply and demand? Maybe the accounts on WOW are over supplied at 1000g per account, while the 1 billion per account may be very low supply for FFXI farmers, or vice versa. If I can buy 1 gold for the same price as 1 gil, maybe that means 10,000 copper = 1 gil...
I don't mean to pick on you personally, because - yeah, I agree - 1000 sure sounds like a really small number compared to 1 billion, but the economy of each game is different and it's really meaningless to compare those numbers. I'm sure I could google to see how much each sells for, how much can be acquired per hour, etc. but I'm just too lazy and/or not interested enough to do the legwork to find out how the currencies compare in these respects. Now I really must go, I have to work out my diabolical plan to hold the world hostage for - *evil grin* - 1 million dollars!!!
The PS2 has PSX hardware in it though. The 360 has NO Xbox hardware in it.
And yet they both advertise backward compatibility on the box. One works, the other... not so much. Does that seem right to you?
Remember, microsoft has stated to the press multiple times that they intend to have every Xbox game running and fully playable in emulation on the 360 - 3 new games added in over 3 months since the last update is not an impressive statistic.
Oh, man. Someday I'll learn when to use my tags, because I'm absolutely certain of it - that was, in fact, the point of my post beyond making fun of local stereotypes.
If there's anything missing, it's most likely the spot for Gameboy Advanced games. Removing that would free up quite a bit of space.
Yeah, it's really hard to get GBA carts in a small form factor portable. I mean just look at the Gameboy Micro, that thing is frickin' huge!
I really do get your point, but I think if they removed the GBA port, they could probably reduce the thickness a lot. Can you imagine the size (thickness, mainly) they could have made the GB Micro if GBA carts were the size of DS carts?
Hey, who are you and what did you do with the real nex? No really, complimenting and pointing out the upside of the "other" two. Not making outrageous claims about Xbox 360 launch numbers beating all previous launches, esp the PS2... not dissing Blu-ray players and speculating an astronomical price for the PS3? Should we be calling 911 and reporting a possible homicide/identity theft here?
Seriously, if I had mod points I would mod this post up. I do agree PC gaming is on a downward slide, but I'm not so sure that it's headed for dire straits - as long as people have home computers for email/web browsing/financial tasks/etc. there will be a market for games on the platform. There certainly are genres that are still better suited to PC gaming, and I have a hard time imagining keeping a mouse/keyboard out in the living room for said games - but you never know.
There's a good reason your fifth grade teacher won't let you site [sic] the Wikipedia, there's no way to back up the statistics claimed there.
My fifth grade teacher certainly would not let me site Wikipedia, even if he would let me cite it. (My fifth grade teacher taught all subjects except gym, including english.)
And, after Googling for a good half-hour and finding NOTHING, I can't help but think that YOUR statistics are about as valid as nex's, although it is fairly difficult to link to nothing for proof.
Not very good at googling are we? Here's a couplesources for ps2 numbers that back the 500/510k numbers besides Wikipedia. Also from NPD directly a story that cites $168m PS2 sales for the first weekend, which is in line with the numbers in the IGN story which say $149m PS2 sales first day. Here's a quick hit that mentions around a million in first weekend sales in Japan, which matches up with the 980k Japan weekend number, which already has a cited source article on Wikipedia you can check out.
A source for 360 sales numbers, for good measure, both Japan(2) and US. Although the US numbers after restating by NPD were a slightly lower 326k, rather than the 332k I mentioned that were in the initial report. Thanks for playing.
By the way, this post took me longer to fomat and type than to google up these links, I'm sure I could find more than just these few if I used a good half-hour for just googling. I'd ask my fifth grade teacher, but after 20-some-odd years, I wonder if he's still even alive?
Don't be a moron. That article was on the day of release in NA and they were reporting what Sony told them - that they wouldn't be shipping 1m consoles as previously targeted - only 500,000. Of course if you think that means they shipped 500,000 and not 500,001 or 499,999 consoles you have bigger problems. Now after the fact, reports showed they shipped and sold around 510,000 - but probably not 510,000. It might have been 509,999 or 510,001 or even 506,000 or 514,000.
Point is when dealing with a really big number usually someone decides to round that number off to make it easy to quote and remember. Now the last time 'the computer dweeb nex' posted this shit (on Friday) it was 200k in 3 months, but now it's 200k in six months. So if the 510k sold in 24 hours is wrong and it's only 500k, he's still a troll and a moron to boot. So both the PS2 and 360 sold out their entire stock in NA at release, 332k for the 360 and 510k for the PS2. Of course the difference in Japan was a bit more pronounced - 980k for the PS2, 42k for the 360 (around 110k for the original xbox, iirc.) Does this mean the 360 sucks? No. These are just sales statistics and have nothing to do with how good a machine is.
Meanwhile you still can't find a 360 in America after over a million have been sold. PS2 sold 200,000 in the first 3 months as a comparison.
Please, stop making up statistics - it sounds like you're even starting to believe them and that will really fuck up your perception of reality. The PS2 sold nearly 1.5 million units combined between the Japanese launch weekend (980k) and the first 24 hours of sales in the US (510k). I have no idea which launch you were referring to when you said 200k in 3 months, but as you can see you are wrong either way - and I would imagine the European launch numbers for the PS2 exceeded your stat handily as well, but can't find a good source for that info.
''I should say I'm above reading reviews,'' he says. ''But I would be lying.''
''In the end, it was what it was: a tough sell,'' says Whedon
As for Serenity, ''I have closure,'' he says. ''And now, I can have it in my home which means that finally I can actually stop working on it.''
Wow, how enlightening. Not a fucking word outta Joss's mouth about the end of Firefly (as opposed to Serenity - the movie.) Sure we have some screwball reporter's interpretation of whatever was said in the interview. Some say the reporter is paraphrasing him when he said that even if there is no more Firefly, the movie at least has some closure. For the number of times Joss talked about ideas for the future (ex. about Jubal Early - "Oh, I know he survived.") and how DVD sales will help determine Firefly's future, it's hard to imagine him totally giving up on the Firefly universe. Until I see exactly what Joss said, I have a real hard time swallowing this story whole.
On a side note, I am a rabid fan. Firefly is Joss Whedon's masterpiece so far. Astonishing X-Men is alright, Angel was good, and Buffy never really drew me in, but I do plan to watch my brother's copy of the series sometime. But if Joss is giving up on Firefly for good, he is throwing away the crown-fucking jewels , imho (which matters not, i am well aware...)
Thanks for letting me rant. This article is just really ticking me off right now.
I'll believe 100% reverse compatibility when I see it. They weren't able to do it with the PS2 and I don't think they'll do it with the PS3 either.
They did it a hell of a lot more successfully than MS has - 99.5% backward compatibility is good enough, especially when compared to ~25% compatibility (based on about 200 of 800 releases - i think those are close for US release numbers) where titles keep coming and going with promises of 100% compatibility.
Now if Sony does the same thing with PS3, I will be the first to criticize them. And I hope MS does eventually get close to 99% compatibility - so I can chuck my xbox and put a 360 in its place.
And why would you buy a PS3 just to play your PS2 games?
No one buys a PS3 just to play their PS2 games. Quit being dramatic. They buy the PS3 so they can play new games, but they want to finish their PS2 games, or they may have a favorite that they want to keep replaying. And they do not want extra consoles hooked up in order to do so, if at all possible. They want to just replace the PS2, and play everything on the PS3 - new games as well as old.
Of course, you know this - but being a fanboy, you want to harp on.5% incompatibility like it's even comparable to MS's incompatibility rate, and denigrate someone who wants to continue playing older games even when newer ones are out. Maybe she likes some of the songs in particular versions of DDR, and since they change each release, she won't be able to dance to those songs in the PS3 DDR release, but if she can just pop the old PS2 DDR Extreme in the new PS3, viola! (or the Ultramix 2 in the 360, same diff.)
Not one store I've talked to in my area has received a second shipment, let alone all stores, as we head into week 3 of release. I wonder if a definition of *all* is what we need?
2734 when I checked. That might be one or two percent of the entire US supply so far.
Sorry, but that's misleading - there are way more than three thousand xbox 360 systems for sale on ebay. Choose "xbox 360 console" for your search and you'll find nearly five thousand - some of which do have "system" in the title, so you can't just add the two numbers for a total. And there are plenty of systems available that have neither "system" or "console" in the title.
At the time I'm writing this, we have over 20,000 auctions (completed/open) for the product "Microsoft Xbox 360 - Game console." Both links are only items over $100 to weed out crap that aren't systems, but there are many systems still listed under $100 (by my guess, 80-90% of the 4,000 auctions under $100 are systems.) Both links are sorted by lowest price first so you can see that they are systems.
Now some of the completed auctions from before yesterday ended without a sale, but I'd put the number of xbox 360 systems for sale via ebay (and we're only on day 1 of launch) at least at 15,000, and probably higher...
November 21, 2002 versus November 18, 2001
One hell of a launch title.
While you are right that the GP was misled by the dates on those amazon pages, he is basically right about it shipping soon after launch, and thus you are wrong when assuming these dates are correct and that Pikmin wasn't a launch window game. Amazon often updates that first available date when new releases of the same thing come out over time - when a DVD is released at a lower price, for instance. That November 21, 2002 date must be when Pikmin went to the "Player's Choice" line, because that ain't when it was released. It was released two weeks after launch - It was planned to be a launch title, but slipped a bit. It stayed well within the launch window, though and is the reason I picked up a Gamecube at launch.
Of course the GGP is correct that it was not technically a launch game, it did not ship on the day of the launch - pretty much the same deal as with Oblivion, which was still pretty much a launch game when it was scheduled for a Dec 6 release, so fanboys will always choose which side of the technicality they want to see based on their fanboy-ism.
The OP actually said $15/1, meaning $15 for 1 time playing Madden online. Of course that means the OP only plays 3.333 repeating times per year,...
Hate to beat the horse even more, but the OP actually did say $15/mo. Here's the line again: "I play VERY sporatically, [sic] so I'd wind up paying $15/1 game session of football online if I only get to play once per month." He didn't say once every three months, as your calculations imply, which would be the $5/mo of Live, capice?
... but you get the gist of what he meant.
Yeah, I do. His post makes much more sense if "the end result" in the line "The end result however is that the end user gets screwed into paying $x/mo in order to play online." refers to the result of developers using Live rather than the (future/hypothetical) result of developers coding their own networking back end that I had assumed originally. But as above, and in my previous post, I still maintain it is not perfectly clear - which is why I was confused at first. But I'm not confused now - I was just explaining what in his post caused me to come up with the wrong initial conclusion.
Anyway, it's much like reading the line "I helped my uncle jack off the horse." and being confused until someone tells you the J in jack should have been capitalized so you understand what was really meant by the phrase - It could have been clearer. (And by no means do I think my posts are any better than the OP's - I know I often skip thoughts in my head as I type, and end up confusing my point because of a missing leap, an unclear preposition or most often a run-on sentence - I'm human after all.)
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Or buy two 32GB drives from the same store for $400 each. Plus you lose the hard drive.
Nice, you can even duct tape the second one to the macbook air and pretend you have a 64GB SSD inside... pure genius!
I'm hunting OSS bwowsews...
The point I find annoying is this- downloads cannot be made across borders easily. I can't download from the JP (japanese) iTunes store without a JP credit card or gift card.
I'm sure Apple would love nothing more than being able to have one store for all countries. This is not Apples fault.
What I was referring to is the fact that you couldn't do that when the iPod first came out. The iPod came in one style, one size, and one color. The Zune comes in three colors. That's more than Apple had.
Damn, man why stop your comparison there.
2001 iPod: 5GB, Zune: 30GB - winner: Zune
2001 iPod: ~.8 in thick, Zune: ~.5 in thick - winner: Zune
2001 iPod: 10hr battery, Zune: 14 hr battery - winner: Zune
2001 iPod: 1.8" b/w screen, Zune: 3" color screen - winner: Zune
2001 iPod: plays music, Zune: plays music, videos, photos - winner: Zune
2001 iPod: firewire only, Zune: USB2 only - winner: Zune
2001 iPod: $399.00, Zune: $249.99 - winner: Zune
Fuck, man, that Zune kicks all kinds of ass. I gotta get me one of those!
In fact, I'd be tempted to say "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." about the 2001 iPod while buying a sexy brown Zune.
Second point, that 5 billion lost, does that include revenue from games and Live? Care to give a cite somewhere?
Microsoft does not release numbers for individual products, so no the number is not for just the hardware. Here's links to MS's Earnings Statements for Q4 2004 ($1.21B lost, shows 2003 as $1.19B lost)), Q4 2005 ($.39B lost) and Q4 2006 ($1.26B lost). What you're looking for is results for the division called 'Home and Entertainment'. As far as I'm aware the only quarter that division made money for MS was Q2 2005 ($.08B earned). That was the quarter (Oct-Dec 2004) that included both Christmas 2004 and the release of Halo 2.
I don't think I've ever seen them screw up the 1.85 stuff (it's essentially 16:9)
I have. They don't set the DVD player to know it's hooked up to a widescreen display, so the DVD player does down-conversion and adds in the black bars on the top and bottom creating a 4:3 image and then sending it to a widescreen display. Some screens can detect this and "auto" switch to a zoom mode, but they may not be in the right "mode" to do it (not setup correctly.)
no. he owned over 50% of Pixar before the buyout. he is the largest individual/non-institutional shareholder in Disney, but his holdings are in the single digits somewhere - I don't recall the exact number but around 3% is what I keep thinking.
Basic math is insightful?
Well then here goes... 1000 gold = 10 million copper in WOW. 10 million compared to 1 billion is a factor of 100, much closer than the factor of 1,000,000 that 1000g vs 1 billion gil implies.
How much gold per hour can someone in WOW accumulate? How much gil per hour in FFXI? If you earn 1 gold per hour (10,000 copper) and I earn 1,000 gil per hour, does 10 copper = 1 gil? Maybe, but you still have to take local prices of items into account.
What about supply and demand? Maybe the accounts on WOW are over supplied at 1000g per account, while the 1 billion per account may be very low supply for FFXI farmers, or vice versa. If I can buy 1 gold for the same price as 1 gil, maybe that means 10,000 copper = 1 gil...
I don't mean to pick on you personally, because - yeah, I agree - 1000 sure sounds like a really small number compared to 1 billion, but the economy of each game is different and it's really meaningless to compare those numbers. I'm sure I could google to see how much each sells for, how much can be acquired per hour, etc. but I'm just too lazy and/or not interested enough to do the legwork to find out how the currencies compare in these respects. Now I really must go, I have to work out my diabolical plan to hold the world hostage for - *evil grin* - 1 million dollars!!!
The PS2 has PSX hardware in it though. The 360 has NO Xbox hardware in it.
... not so much. Does that seem right to you?
And yet they both advertise backward compatibility on the box. One works, the other
Remember, microsoft has stated to the press multiple times that they intend to have every Xbox game running and fully playable in emulation on the 360 - 3 new games added in over 3 months since the last update is not an impressive statistic.
Oh, man. Someday I'll learn when to use my tags, because I'm absolutely certain of it - that was, in fact, the point of my post beyond making fun of local stereotypes.
Wow, that's amazing!!!! But even better is this: "sex" vs "/. effect". It confirms my suspicions about the relative importance of things around here.
If there's anything missing, it's most likely the spot for Gameboy Advanced games. Removing that would free up quite a bit of space.
Yeah, it's really hard to get GBA carts in a small form factor portable. I mean just look at the Gameboy Micro, that thing is frickin' huge!
I really do get your point, but I think if they removed the GBA port, they could probably reduce the thickness a lot. Can you imagine the size (thickness, mainly) they could have made the GB Micro if GBA carts were the size of DS carts?
They will all do well.
Hey, who are you and what did you do with the real nex? No really, complimenting and pointing out the upside of the "other" two. Not making outrageous claims about Xbox 360 launch numbers beating all previous launches, esp the PS2... not dissing Blu-ray players and speculating an astronomical price for the PS3? Should we be calling 911 and reporting a possible homicide/identity theft here?
Seriously, if I had mod points I would mod this post up. I do agree PC gaming is on a downward slide, but I'm not so sure that it's headed for dire straits - as long as people have home computers for email/web browsing/financial tasks/etc. there will be a market for games on the platform. There certainly are genres that are still better suited to PC gaming, and I have a hard time imagining keeping a mouse/keyboard out in the living room for said games - but you never know.
There's a good reason your fifth grade teacher won't let you site [sic] the Wikipedia, there's no way to back up the statistics claimed there.
My fifth grade teacher certainly would not let me site Wikipedia, even if he would let me cite it. (My fifth grade teacher taught all subjects except gym, including english.)
And, after Googling for a good half-hour and finding NOTHING, I can't help but think that YOUR statistics are about as valid as nex's, although it is fairly difficult to link to nothing for proof.
Not very good at googling are we? Here's a couple sources for ps2 numbers that back the 500/510k numbers besides Wikipedia. Also from NPD directly a story that cites $168m PS2 sales for the first weekend, which is in line with the numbers in the IGN story which say $149m PS2 sales first day. Here's a quick hit that mentions around a million in first weekend sales in Japan, which matches up with the 980k Japan weekend number, which already has a cited source article on Wikipedia you can check out.
A source for 360 sales numbers, for good measure, both Japan (2) and US. Although the US numbers after restating by NPD were a slightly lower 326k, rather than the 332k I mentioned that were in the initial report. Thanks for playing.
By the way, this post took me longer to fomat and type than to google up these links, I'm sure I could find more than just these few if I used a good half-hour for just googling. I'd ask my fifth grade teacher, but after 20-some-odd years, I wonder if he's still even alive?
Don't be a moron. That article was on the day of release in NA and they were reporting what Sony told them - that they wouldn't be shipping 1m consoles as previously targeted - only 500,000. Of course if you think that means they shipped 500,000 and not 500,001 or 499,999 consoles you have bigger problems. Now after the fact, reports showed they shipped and sold around 510,000 - but probably not 510,000. It might have been 509,999 or 510,001 or even 506,000 or 514,000.
Point is when dealing with a really big number usually someone decides to round that number off to make it easy to quote and remember. Now the last time 'the computer dweeb nex' posted this shit (on Friday) it was 200k in 3 months, but now it's 200k in six months. So if the 510k sold in 24 hours is wrong and it's only 500k, he's still a troll and a moron to boot. So both the PS2 and 360 sold out their entire stock in NA at release, 332k for the 360 and 510k for the PS2. Of course the difference in Japan was a bit more pronounced - 980k for the PS2, 42k for the 360 (around 110k for the original xbox, iirc.) Does this mean the 360 sucks? No. These are just sales statistics and have nothing to do with how good a machine is.
Meanwhile you still can't find a 360 in America after over a million have been sold. PS2 sold 200,000 in the first 3 months as a comparison.
Please, stop making up statistics - it sounds like you're even starting to believe them and that will really fuck up your perception of reality. The PS2 sold nearly 1.5 million units combined between the Japanese launch weekend (980k) and the first 24 hours of sales in the US (510k). I have no idea which launch you were referring to when you said 200k in 3 months, but as you can see you are wrong either way - and I would imagine the European launch numbers for the PS2 exceeded your stat handily as well, but can't find a good source for that info.
Joss Whedon quotes:
''I should say I'm above reading reviews,'' he says. ''But I would be lying.''
''In the end, it was what it was: a tough sell,'' says Whedon
As for Serenity, ''I have closure,'' he says. ''And now, I can have it in my home which means that finally I can actually stop working on it.''
Wow, how enlightening. Not a fucking word outta Joss's mouth about the end of Firefly (as opposed to Serenity - the movie.) Sure we have some screwball reporter's interpretation of whatever was said in the interview. Some say the reporter is paraphrasing him when he said that even if there is no more Firefly, the movie at least has some closure. For the number of times Joss talked about ideas for the future (ex. about Jubal Early - "Oh, I know he survived.") and how DVD sales will help determine Firefly's future, it's hard to imagine him totally giving up on the Firefly universe. Until I see exactly what Joss said, I have a real hard time swallowing this story whole.
On a side note, I am a rabid fan. Firefly is Joss Whedon's masterpiece so far. Astonishing X-Men is alright, Angel was good, and Buffy never really drew me in, but I do plan to watch my brother's copy of the series sometime. But if Joss is giving up on Firefly for good, he is throwing away the crown-fucking jewels , imho (which matters not, i am well aware...)
Thanks for letting me rant. This article is just really ticking me off right now.
Oops... Wish i could *honestly* say that was i typo, but i seriously forgot how to spell there for a sec. +1 Funny to you, sir.
I'll believe 100% reverse compatibility when I see it. They weren't able to do it with the PS2 and I don't think they'll do it with the PS3 either.
.5% incompatibility like it's even comparable to MS's incompatibility rate, and denigrate someone who wants to continue playing older games even when newer ones are out. Maybe she likes some of the songs in particular versions of DDR, and since they change each release, she won't be able to dance to those songs in the PS3 DDR release, but if she can just pop the old PS2 DDR Extreme in the new PS3, viola! (or the Ultramix 2 in the 360, same diff.)
They did it a hell of a lot more successfully than MS has - 99.5% backward compatibility is good enough, especially when compared to ~25% compatibility (based on about 200 of 800 releases - i think those are close for US release numbers) where titles keep coming and going with promises of 100% compatibility.
Now if Sony does the same thing with PS3, I will be the first to criticize them. And I hope MS does eventually get close to 99% compatibility - so I can chuck my xbox and put a 360 in its place.
And why would you buy a PS3 just to play your PS2 games?
No one buys a PS3 just to play their PS2 games. Quit being dramatic. They buy the PS3 so they can play new games, but they want to finish their PS2 games, or they may have a favorite that they want to keep replaying. And they do not want extra consoles hooked up in order to do so, if at all possible. They want to just replace the PS2, and play everything on the PS3 - new games as well as old.
Of course, you know this - but being a fanboy, you want to harp on
All stores are getting new units each week.
Not one store I've talked to in my area has received a second shipment, let alone all stores, as we head into week 3 of release. I wonder if a definition of *all* is what we need?
2734 when I checked. That might be one or two percent of the entire US supply so far.
Sorry, but that's misleading - there are way more than three thousand xbox 360 systems for sale on ebay. Choose "xbox 360 console" for your search and you'll find nearly five thousand - some of which do have "system" in the title, so you can't just add the two numbers for a total. And there are plenty of systems available that have neither "system" or "console" in the title.
But check these links out:
xbox 360 systems - nearly 11,000 up for bid.
completed xbox 360 auctions - over 9,500 already completed.*
At the time I'm writing this, we have over 20,000 auctions (completed/open) for the product "Microsoft Xbox 360 - Game console." Both links are only items over $100 to weed out crap that aren't systems, but there are many systems still listed under $100 (by my guess, 80-90% of the 4,000 auctions under $100 are systems.) Both links are sorted by lowest price first so you can see that they are systems.
Now some of the completed auctions from before yesterday ended without a sale, but I'd put the number of xbox 360 systems for sale via ebay (and we're only on day 1 of launch) at least at 15,000, and probably higher...
*must log in to view completed auctions.
Of course the GGP is correct that it was not technically a launch game, it did not ship on the day of the launch - pretty much the same deal as with Oblivion, which was still pretty much a launch game when it was scheduled for a Dec 6 release, so fanboys will always choose which side of the technicality they want to see based on their fanboy-ism.
The OP actually said $15/1, meaning $15 for 1 time playing Madden online. Of course that means the OP only plays 3.333 repeating times per year, ...
... but you get the gist of what he meant.
Hate to beat the horse even more, but the OP actually did say $15/mo. Here's the line again: "I play VERY sporatically, [sic] so I'd wind up paying $15/1 game session of football online if I only get to play once per month." He didn't say once every three months, as your calculations imply, which would be the $5/mo of Live, capice?
Yeah, I do. His post makes much more sense if "the end result" in the line "The end result however is that the end user gets screwed into paying $x/mo in order to play online." refers to the result of developers using Live rather than the (future/hypothetical) result of developers coding their own networking back end that I had assumed originally. But as above, and in my previous post, I still maintain it is not perfectly clear - which is why I was confused at first. But I'm not confused now - I was just explaining what in his post caused me to come up with the wrong initial conclusion.
Anyway, it's much like reading the line "I helped my uncle jack off the horse." and being confused until someone tells you the J in jack should have been capitalized so you understand what was really meant by the phrase - It could have been clearer. (And by no means do I think my posts are any better than the OP's - I know I often skip thoughts in my head as I type, and end up confusing my point because of a missing leap, an unclear preposition or most often a run-on sentence - I'm human after all.)