Well Crysis was kinda of expected to "fail" at launch if you knew anything about the company's history. The only other game the company has released was Far Cry and when that came out, people still complained about its high system requirements. Furthermore, although Far Cry "failed" in its first month, the game sold relatively well over its lifetime.
As for UT3, lack of marketing, lack of hype and confusing titling definitely hurt it. Why buy UT3 for $60 when you can buy the UT collection pack for $50? And UT2004 is better than UT3 by 2001!
A mass produced letter containing an apology for causing a situation where laughingsquid could've been taken to court costing them potentially thousands of dollars? Not exactly history's best PR damage control attempt. From your link :
My advise to companies regarding situations like this is that their PR departments should become more involved and aware of what their legal departments are doing with regards to the community at large.
Um, compared to what? The PC? The PC has always pwn3d consoles in the graphics department. The Wii? Nintendo put up the white flag before the Wii even launched. The PS3? Mileage varied based on the game, Madden on the PS3 looks like crap while videos of Final Fantasy XIII and MGS4 trailers continue to impress all but PC graphic whores (who are too busy scraping together money for a DirectX 10 video card for Crysis).
The problem is that the letter is nonetheless sent out on bad faith.
If the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal suddenly got a letter from Microsoft ordering them to cease and desist all printing of the Microsoft logo outside of purchased ads because some program caught it being used without express permission, they'd be hell to pay. Maybe not through the courts, but you'd be believe that the editors would be told to ride Microsoft's ass until they made up for it beyond a mass produced apology letter. (ie. exclusive interview(s) or first-hand reporting opportunities) Corporations take this sort of stuff EXTREMELY seriously even if it gets dismissed by the end of the week, especially when potentially millions of dollars are at risk from legal fees.
I can't comment on Stephen Totilo (I don't watch MTV for gaming information) but Chris Suellentrop and N'Gai Croal but extensively cover the business aspect of video gaming.
If they talk about Halo, its about the marketing and the franchise development. If they talk about GTA, its about the possible political impact it could have on business decisions regarding a game's development. If they talk about Sony('s PS3), its about how the video game division is bleeding the company badly and that no one can out bleed Microsoft('s Xbox 360).
Course, if you're a serious gamer and you read up on discussion forums and video game websites, nothing they talk about is new.
Its pretty much any company that sells "gift cards", they're basically pre-paid credit cards. Give Best Buy $50 now, get your "money" back in the form of merchandise in the future. Lost the card(s)? Sucks to be you! Accountants love these things cause you KNOW companies are just sitting on millions of dollars worth of these in their account books.
From interviews given by Ubisoft (developers of Assassin's Creed), the devs basically (although never outright) admit that the 360 version is better graphically due to hardware designs. Ubisoft gave a lot of "post-launch" interviews that are up at Gametrailers.com including a comparison video (for those who would rather see it than hear it.)
Metallica versus Napster was never about illegal downloads, it was about setting precedent which basically scared the s*** out of everyone in the music industry. You COULD NOT distribute music online (let alone sell it). Either you were under contract (which made use of Napster illegal) or you were stuck with terrible alternatives like Kazaa or Limewire. Two years later the iTunes Store comes out and the RIAA starts shitting themselves over Apple's success. (Not to mention the legal disputes).
At best a fansub makes the show available to those who wouldn't buy anyway, with a FEW additional buyers.
Seeing as the overwhelming majority of animes are NEVER shown on U.S. cable, saying that fansubs only creates a few buyers at best is sheer idiocy. Would you have watched the original Star Trek series if the only way was to buy (or borrow) a VHS copy with 3 or 4 episodes on each cassette tape at $20~30 each? What about American Idol? Lost? What about something several seasons long like 24 or Grey's Anatomy? For every Pokemon and Naruto success story, theres a Full Metal Panic and Ah! My Goddess (both direct-to-DVD series, both popular enough to receive sequels in Japan but are essentially unknown outside of the fandom).
I won't nitpick on the justifications, but roughly mid-way through the game (without giving away spoilers) WMDs get involved and it becomes clear that this is not a (ultimately) not a war for oil or big businesses. Oh and you don't spend the entire game in the middle east so you're not always up against a "middle eastern bloc army."
Not to nitpick but the cover system is not as good as it seems. Unless you're using a sniper rifle, a (light) machine gun or a mounted weapon, its nearly impossible to shoot through "soft" targets. I've fired entire clips at sheet metal using the M4A1 and watched as an enemy behind it simply react by putting a dozen AK-47 rounds in my face.
Re:the single best single player experience in yea
on
Call of Duty 4 Review
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· Score: 1
In ten years? Seriously, if you think CoD4's single player was the -best- in the past ten years, you've been deprived.
Bioshock and Half-Life 2: Episode 2 destroy CoD4's single player experience and thats just this year. Granted the C-130 mission is absolutely amazing to play (they could probably make a game based entirely on that kind of gameplay), but the bulk of the missions were your bread and butter FPS which became a bore immediately after the first playthrough. Scripted enemy appearances and a lack of possible paths make the AI far too predictable for serious replay value (I once had to restart the first Act I mission because I placed claymore mines where the enemy would attack the TV station from but when they went off they would kill the AI Marines at that corner repeatedly.)
Oh and the game is FAR from perfect. Flashbangs magically don't affect you (or the enemy) if you simply have your back to them.
Who says they're necessarily "friends"? (I have 4 registered "friends" on Facebook.) I've seen photos of myself posted and tagged on Facebook by people I've never talked to. The only reason I found some of these photos was because they were posted to a Halloween party group I joined just to receive the e-mail updates. You seriously can't expect people to monitor every person they have contact with and has a Facebook account.
If you play Chess to the point that you can play out the infinite number of moves, you lost a while ago.
Same thing here, if the goal of the game is to gain a monopoly on the next-gen video format, claiming that its a stalemate is akin to admitting defeat. Hybrid systems would be stupid, eventually the market would support only hybrid systems until one of the two sides officially admits defeat due to lack of profits.
I'll admit I'm a Facebook user but I've NEVER submitted my photo (or any other photo) to Facebook simply because I'm too lazy and use it too infreqently to care. That said, there are at LEAST a dozen photos of me on that site, none of which I gave permission to anyone to post. You can't realistically expect people to monitor sites like Facebook just to protect their privacy.
I played through the fan translated NES version and the DS version is nothing more than a graphically upgraded version of the NES version. That said, you're basically comparing a game's plot written in 1990 for the NES to modern RPGs. Hardly a fair comparison.
the robot seemed to hold its own--until its hydraulic fluid leaked out. "The difference was huge," Kamler says. "It was virtually impossible [for it] to tie a knot, let alone move its arms."
On a more serious note, unless they plan on deploying these things in the rear lines of Iraq, this is going to turn into another armor and weight versus speed and efficiency battle. If AK-47's can punch through kevlar armor, what are the chances of a mobile-OR robot surviving a some shrapnel? One or two lucky hits can essentially cripple any robot.
Its easy to confuse if you're not familiar with the Wiimote, and the fact that we're looking at COMPARISON pictures manes it pretty easy to see the differences.
That said, if you're a clueless soccer mom and a Wal-Mart employee comes up to you and says "we don't have the Wii in stock, but this is just like it", chances are you're gonna buy it cause you can't find an real Nintendo Wii before Christmas.
I'm more curious as to how the professor will "grade" the editing and/or deletion of whatever their students submit. It would really suck of a student failed the assignment because he attracted the attention of a delete-friently admin.
The majority of Wikipedia is made up of non-notable articles (do we really need a 2 page article detailing Captain Kirk's family life and career?) and removing them would simply kill Wikipedia.
Then again, I could imagine it would be a reasonable compromise for Valve to check you actually played the game for an extended period of time in Russia before you legitimately moved to the US. If it showed you played it for a few weeks in Russia and now you want to play it in the US, then I would agree that they should allow it. If their records show the game was never played in its original country of purchase, then I think they'd have decent grounds to decline your request.
You've never worked in the service industry have you? If you seriously think that a corporation will take the time and effort to check the account logs of where, when and for long you've used their service, you're woefully naive. Internet connections from U.S. military bases in foreign countries run through a labyrinth of routers, proxies and firewalls, you think Joe Average working the phones at Valve is going to make the distinction? Simply raising that issue alone would raise hell in the media. "U.S. soldier fighting overseas robbed by U.S. corporation!"
That future may be in managing technology, which requires skills today's college students don't have: writing, critical thinking, hard work and just plain showing up.
Or maybe, today's college students are wising up to the fact that most businesses work their tech staff to the bone dumbing down reports so their managers could understand them, following step-by-step instructions for an hour when they could fix it in 5 minutes if given the chance and if managers didn't call their IT staff on their vacations/weekends to help fix the e-mail server cause someone decided to change the settings without IT approval.
I've heard of far, far too many IT stories from my friends and on/. to even consider going into IT as a career. IT is not the dream job many people believe it to be. Anyone who runs a simply network for a friend(s)/family knows how annoying it can be to get a random phone call from someone asking for help to access their e-mail.
E3 used to be really overcrowded and it was hard to get any "real" business done.
And whose fault was that? I was reading articles written by news companies complaining about the lax screening process for years (Gamespy once posted a photo of 9 year old at E3 several years ago) and we ended up with a knee-jerk reaction by the ESA (which was to basically restart E3 supposed "the way it was supposed to be" never mind the fact that practically half of the show was axed).
And this was despite the old E3 being in California and being rather expensive (if you couldn't sleaze in on a free industry-only pass), so I don't think you can blame those for being reasons for the lackluster conference.
Its not the cost of entry thats the deal-breaker for many people, its the travel expenses. NO ONE in the past complained about E3 costs because either you had a business expense account you could use or you weren't supposed to be there in the first place in which case you kept your mouth shut. Simple as that.
Slashdot Mirror
Didn't Interplay, Volition's publisher, go bankrupt and sell off Volition?
As for UT3, lack of marketing, lack of hype and confusing titling definitely hurt it. Why buy UT3 for $60 when you can buy the UT collection pack for $50? And UT2004 is better than UT3 by 2001!
My advise to companies regarding situations like this is that their PR departments should become more involved and aware of what their legal departments are doing with regards to the community at large.
Um, compared to what? The PC? The PC has always pwn3d consoles in the graphics department. The Wii? Nintendo put up the white flag before the Wii even launched. The PS3? Mileage varied based on the game, Madden on the PS3 looks like crap while videos of Final Fantasy XIII and MGS4 trailers continue to impress all but PC graphic whores (who are too busy scraping together money for a DirectX 10 video card for Crysis).
If the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal suddenly got a letter from Microsoft ordering them to cease and desist all printing of the Microsoft logo outside of purchased ads because some program caught it being used without express permission, they'd be hell to pay. Maybe not through the courts, but you'd be believe that the editors would be told to ride Microsoft's ass until they made up for it beyond a mass produced apology letter. (ie. exclusive interview(s) or first-hand reporting opportunities) Corporations take this sort of stuff EXTREMELY seriously even if it gets dismissed by the end of the week, especially when potentially millions of dollars are at risk from legal fees.
If they talk about Halo, its about the marketing and the franchise development. If they talk about GTA, its about the possible political impact it could have on business decisions regarding a game's development. If they talk about Sony('s PS3), its about how the video game division is bleeding the company badly and that no one can out bleed Microsoft('s Xbox 360).
Course, if you're a serious gamer and you read up on discussion forums and video game websites, nothing they talk about is new.
Its pretty much any company that sells "gift cards", they're basically pre-paid credit cards. Give Best Buy $50 now, get your "money" back in the form of merchandise in the future. Lost the card(s)? Sucks to be you! Accountants love these things cause you KNOW companies are just sitting on millions of dollars worth of these in their account books.
From interviews given by Ubisoft (developers of Assassin's Creed), the devs basically (although never outright) admit that the 360 version is better graphically due to hardware designs. Ubisoft gave a lot of "post-launch" interviews that are up at Gametrailers.com including a comparison video (for those who would rather see it than hear it.)
Metallica versus Napster was never about illegal downloads, it was about setting precedent which basically scared the s*** out of everyone in the music industry. You COULD NOT distribute music online (let alone sell it). Either you were under contract (which made use of Napster illegal) or you were stuck with terrible alternatives like Kazaa or Limewire. Two years later the iTunes Store comes out and the RIAA starts shitting themselves over Apple's success. (Not to mention the legal disputes).
Seeing as the overwhelming majority of animes are NEVER shown on U.S. cable, saying that fansubs only creates a few buyers at best is sheer idiocy. Would you have watched the original Star Trek series if the only way was to buy (or borrow) a VHS copy with 3 or 4 episodes on each cassette tape at $20~30 each? What about American Idol? Lost? What about something several seasons long like 24 or Grey's Anatomy? For every Pokemon and Naruto success story, theres a Full Metal Panic and Ah! My Goddess (both direct-to-DVD series, both popular enough to receive sequels in Japan but are essentially unknown outside of the fandom).
I won't nitpick on the justifications, but roughly mid-way through the game (without giving away spoilers) WMDs get involved and it becomes clear that this is not a (ultimately) not a war for oil or big businesses. Oh and you don't spend the entire game in the middle east so you're not always up against a "middle eastern bloc army."
Not to nitpick but the cover system is not as good as it seems. Unless you're using a sniper rifle, a (light) machine gun or a mounted weapon, its nearly impossible to shoot through "soft" targets. I've fired entire clips at sheet metal using the M4A1 and watched as an enemy behind it simply react by putting a dozen AK-47 rounds in my face.
Bioshock and Half-Life 2: Episode 2 destroy CoD4's single player experience and thats just this year. Granted the C-130 mission is absolutely amazing to play (they could probably make a game based entirely on that kind of gameplay), but the bulk of the missions were your bread and butter FPS which became a bore immediately after the first playthrough. Scripted enemy appearances and a lack of possible paths make the AI far too predictable for serious replay value (I once had to restart the first Act I mission because I placed claymore mines where the enemy would attack the TV station from but when they went off they would kill the AI Marines at that corner repeatedly.)
Oh and the game is FAR from perfect. Flashbangs magically don't affect you (or the enemy) if you simply have your back to them.
Who says they're necessarily "friends"? (I have 4 registered "friends" on Facebook.) I've seen photos of myself posted and tagged on Facebook by people I've never talked to. The only reason I found some of these photos was because they were posted to a Halloween party group I joined just to receive the e-mail updates. You seriously can't expect people to monitor every person they have contact with and has a Facebook account.
Same thing here, if the goal of the game is to gain a monopoly on the next-gen video format, claiming that its a stalemate is akin to admitting defeat. Hybrid systems would be stupid, eventually the market would support only hybrid systems until one of the two sides officially admits defeat due to lack of profits.
I'll admit I'm a Facebook user but I've NEVER submitted my photo (or any other photo) to Facebook simply because I'm too lazy and use it too infreqently to care. That said, there are at LEAST a dozen photos of me on that site, none of which I gave permission to anyone to post. You can't realistically expect people to monitor sites like Facebook just to protect their privacy.
I played through the fan translated NES version and the DS version is nothing more than a graphically upgraded version of the NES version. That said, you're basically comparing a game's plot written in 1990 for the NES to modern RPGs. Hardly a fair comparison.
On a more serious note, unless they plan on deploying these things in the rear lines of Iraq, this is going to turn into another armor and weight versus speed and efficiency battle. If AK-47's can punch through kevlar armor, what are the chances of a mobile-OR robot surviving a some shrapnel? One or two lucky hits can essentially cripple any robot.
Except the Wiimote doesn't ship with the wrist strap attached.
That said, if you're a clueless soccer mom and a Wal-Mart employee comes up to you and says "we don't have the Wii in stock, but this is just like it", chances are you're gonna buy it cause you can't find an real Nintendo Wii before Christmas.
I'm more curious as to how the professor will "grade" the editing and/or deletion of whatever their students submit. It would really suck of a student failed the assignment because he attracted the attention of a delete-friently admin.
The majority of Wikipedia is made up of non-notable articles (do we really need a 2 page article detailing Captain Kirk's family life and career?) and removing them would simply kill Wikipedia.
You've never worked in the service industry have you? If you seriously think that a corporation will take the time and effort to check the account logs of where, when and for long you've used their service, you're woefully naive. Internet connections from U.S. military bases in foreign countries run through a labyrinth of routers, proxies and firewalls, you think Joe Average working the phones at Valve is going to make the distinction? Simply raising that issue alone would raise hell in the media. "U.S. soldier fighting overseas robbed by U.S. corporation!"
Or maybe, today's college students are wising up to the fact that most businesses work their tech staff to the bone dumbing down reports so their managers could understand them, following step-by-step instructions for an hour when they could fix it in 5 minutes if given the chance and if managers didn't call their IT staff on their vacations/weekends to help fix the e-mail server cause someone decided to change the settings without IT approval.
I've heard of far, far too many IT stories from my friends and on /. to even consider going into IT as a career. IT is not the dream job many people believe it to be. Anyone who runs a simply network for a friend(s)/family knows how annoying it can be to get a random phone call from someone asking for help to access their e-mail.
And whose fault was that? I was reading articles written by news companies complaining about the lax screening process for years (Gamespy once posted a photo of 9 year old at E3 several years ago) and we ended up with a knee-jerk reaction by the ESA (which was to basically restart E3 supposed "the way it was supposed to be" never mind the fact that practically half of the show was axed).
And this was despite the old E3 being in California and being rather expensive (if you couldn't sleaze in on a free industry-only pass), so I don't think you can blame those for being reasons for the lackluster conference.
Its not the cost of entry thats the deal-breaker for many people, its the travel expenses. NO ONE in the past complained about E3 costs because either you had a business expense account you could use or you weren't supposed to be there in the first place in which case you kept your mouth shut. Simple as that.