A rep told GameSpot News: 'Assassin's Creed is coming to the PS3. No other announcements have been made.'
Yet. "No other announcements have been made [yet]."
Face it, as far as anyone knows, Assassin's Creed was just a trailer. There was no gameplay, no word on whether it would use the motion sensor and anybody who compared the graphics from the 360 and PS3 knows its not hard to imagine the game running on the 360 (at least in the graphics department.)
Every title/developer that made the Ps1 and Ps2 the most successful consoles of all time is still on board for the Ps3...nobody's jumped ship and there are more exclusives than you think.
Actually there weren't that many PS1 + PS2 hit exclusives. Sure there was the Final Fantasy games and the occasional gems, Disgaea, God of War,.hack series, but compared to Nintendo's anything with Mario, Metroid, Zelda and Super Smash Bros games, Sony doesn't have much. (Squaresoft/SquareEnix never 100% supported Sony either, remember Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicals and the Dragon Quest Slime games? Konami made Castlevania games for the GBA and DS, Capcom ports games to every system they can and Namco keeps flip-flopping on PS2 support.)
Prices come down over time.
The PS2 has been out for almost 6 years now and it still hasn't hit the $100 mark. I'll believe Sony will price cut the PS3 when it actually happens.
also, the Ps3 doesn't NEED a "halo." Microsoft had TWO and they were still utterly, totally crushed last round. The titles they DO have (or are expected to have) are more than sufficient.
The Halo games are credited with single-handedly selling millions of systems. It took the PS2 about 3 years to beat the Dreamcast and that was with almost no competition from Nintendo and Microsoft. That doesn't speak of confidence.
Blu-Ray won't go exactly the same way as it's in a different stage of its lifecycle than DVD was when it launched, but even those who have never heard of it but might want a Ps3 will more than likely buy or rent a disc just to see what the fuss is about if they have access to an HDTV.
Except that most people don't have access to an HDTV thus rendering your argument moot. HDTVs have less than a 5% marketshare penetration rate worldwide. VERY few people are going to see the difference in quality.
Price isn't usually an issue for early adopters ESPECIALLY during holiday season, as the buying frenzies on ebay for the Ps2 and 360 prove. Those machines were going for easily double MSRP.
Irrelevant. The PS2 and 360 both suffered manufacturing shortages initially and the PS2 suffered from a sharp decline in demand following Christmas (wait lists were supposed to extend into April but ended up being filled up by January) whereas the 360 CONTINUES to enjoy a high demand, low supply advantage (at least in the U.S.)
As for decline in quality, Sony's Bravia sets were flying off the shelves when they were introduced and still are...and current buzz is that they're excellent sets. So any rumors of a quality drop certainly haven't appeared to affect the buying mainstream.
Wow, way to make yourself look smart by citing other markets. Sony is getting SPANKED in the TV manufacturing business. Dead pixels, poor quality, competition from Chinese manufacturers are all beating down Sony. Marketshare-wise, Sony is declining, fast. Price-wise, Sony cannot compete. Quality-wise, theres talk of Sony being re-listed as second-rate.
Sony is coming off of their second consecutive massive victory in the console area with the #1 and #2 most successful consoles in history. They have a nearly limitless stable of proven franchises on board, and have hit the point where "Playstation" is a household word. On the other hand, Nintendo has been steadily losing market share (in the console area...I'm aware the GBA and DS are quite successful) since the SNES launched and Microsoft is just coming off of losing $4 Billion on their initial venture into the industry with no signs of gaining ANY marketshare almost a year after launch. Of the three players involved this time around, Sony isn't the one that has to worry about coming in last place.
Holy crap, how much did Sony pay you to write this? The PS1 and PS2 are NOT the 'most successful consoles in history'. The NES used to control about 95% of the marketshare and the SNES vs Genesis war is practically a textbook moment in the history of electronic econ
Its like not getting a call from your wife/girlfriend when you expected one and then assuming she was kidnapped, raped, murdered and thrown into a dumpter and you call 911 for help when all along she just left her cell phone at home by mistake.
Actually its more like your girlfriend calling you, yelling 'Help m-' and then hearing the phone being crushed before the line is cut. Then calling her home phone, her workplace and her friends to learn no one knows where she is or whats shes doing.
Example: Boy who cried wolf.
Except in some "versions" of the story the boy is killed and eaten by the wolf... Or in the kiddy versions, the wolf eats the sheep/chickens/whatever the kid is supposed to be protecting.
And frankly the truth is the good Carnegie has done really have out lived the harm he did.
Uh, not really. Carnegie's complete and utter destruction of the unions cripped industrial growth for decades due to his tactics. The lack of a minimum wage (pay wages in the CENTS per day and the Ford Model T was priced at a 'cheap' $350), the methodology of simply decreasing workers' pay instead of increasing productivity or quality (sales are down? Fire some workers while maintaining the status quo!) and his own self-proclaimed "it was necessary at the time for the growth of the nation" while creating a permanent lower working class group of people in the U.S. (Oh yeah, building libraries is real helpful at a time when child labor is commonplace.)
Carnegie was a fool, even in retrospect. By the time his charities were felt by the masses, his company had already left its mark. Corporate intimidation and bullying was used for decades (and arguably to this day). Violence between factory owners and factory workers sparked on and off WELL into the 20th century. Unions have NEVER shaken off the image of essentially being puppet creations made by the corporations for calming the masses (unions in the U.S. are a joke compared to European counterparts and in many cases are being dismantled in some industries).
Actually Saddam claimed he had WMDs for years even after the first Gulf War. He even used them to gas the Kurds in northern Iraq after the first Gulf War.
The fact is there aren't that many countries capable of making nukes.
About a dozen, half of which are either unstable (India and Pakistan), have unsecure nuclear arsenals (Russia) and/or have uncertain loyalties (France and Germany have been sending mixed signals lately.) Theres also South Africa but thats an entirely different discussion.
If either the US or Israel were nuked, they would have a very short list of suspects and be inclined to bomb the most likely first and do the paperwork later.
It took the U.S. about a month to go into Afghanistan and that was after YEARS of previous attacks (the '93 truck bombing of the WTC, the '98 embassy bombings in Africa.) I don't know where you got the idea that the U.S./Israel would nuke first, ask questions later.
When you have reason to believe that radical fundamentalists (India is a predominately Hindu nation while Pakistan is predominately Muslim, two religions with a centuries old grudge) which has already attacked a foreign nation takes up residence in your nuclear armed neighbor's backyard, your trigger finger gets itchy.
Except that they would deny ever launching it, claim that it was simply stolen by rogue terrorists and that their nation does not support or endorse the actions of said terrorist group. Any evidence gathering would take years to prove, let alone be brought to light. After all, The real world is not like a Tom Clancy novel.
Actually, if you talk to most political theorists, they'd point out that tensions between India and Pakistan are even WORSE nowadays.
After 9/11, Pakistan freaked out and began to lock the locks on their nuclear arsenal. A year afterward, reports that Pakistan had been helping North Korea develop nuclear weapons comes out. In international speak this says, 'we are unstable (we have security concerns regarding our nuclear arsenal), we crave war (peaceful nations don't share nuclear secrets with countries that are technically still at war) and we still have not taken steps to prevent a nuclear exchange despite these serious concerns (they're fighting a grudge that has lasted for half a century, armed with nukes and bedding with known terrorist groups.)'
India is just as bad. Pakistan border both Afghanistan AND Iran, two of the most unfriendly nations currently (remember all those reports about Al Qaeda reportedly escaping into India through the mountains?), so India is paranoid of the radicals/terrorists/refugees that have recently come into Pakistan. If the reports about Pakistan helping North Korea develop nuclear weapons is true, this could set nuclear talks back DECADES. In international speak this says, 'we are paranoid of Pakistan launching a first strike/pre-emptive attack against us (Pakistan has fewer nukes so they would want to do this to minimize damage in a nuclear counter-attack), we believe Pakistan is socially and politically unstable due to recent events (U.S. invasion of Afghanistan) and we do not believe that the international community would come to our aid in a serious confrontation (the U.N. is still in a pissing match against the U.S. for invading Iraq, North Korea has everyone second-guessing their intelligence agencies to avoid another "Iraq has WMDs!" fiasco and Iran has everyone kicking the crap out of each other trying to figure out what to do without losing their precious oil/without military action/without having the U.S. go off on its own again).
Actually the author of that webpage did pull a lot of it out of his ass. I won't go into detail but here are some extremely weak points in his interpretation.
1. Black Mesa has a huge ripple effect on the rest of the world after the events of Half-Life 1, as the Combine open up portals world-wide, via its portal-network satellite. Aliens (from Xen) of all types are teleported into suburbs.
A huge population shift occurs as people move into the cities, protected by soldiers and barbed wire fences, to escape the monsters.
So are the aliens teleporting in randomly or not? The word randomly implied unpredictable so theres no way for people to simply flee into the cities for protection. (Unless the portals eventually close in which case, why doesn't the military simply push out after the initial shock?)
2. Using the established Xen-Earth portal network as transport gateways, The Combine launches a multi-pronged, all-out assault on the entire Earth, teleporting troops as well as drop-ships, gun-ships, and striders from Combine off-world outposts.
No evidence. Other than the portals in HL1 (which can be argued as a result of the alien artifact) and the one seenen at the end of HL2, theres no evidence of any transplanetary portal technology used (all the portals used in HL2 are relatively short-range seeing as you never go farther than a few city blocks). They could've simply invaded the old fashioned way through spaceships for all we know.
3. Breen formally "surrenders" Earth after 7 hours of combat between Mankind and the Combine.
Unless the world suddenly decided to form and unite under a 'world government' any type of "surrender" on a world-wide scale would never be accepted. (See: Iraq, only on a world scale.)
Actually the general concensus among developers was that the Xbox360 developer kits were hands down the best. The Wii kits got second place for being similar to the GC's system (read: no need to spend months learns an entirely new system). And the PS3 is ranked lower than the infamous Saturn dev kits (the fact that NO ONE has ever worked with the Cell let alone anything similar to it in the past isn't helping).
What about the physics? (HL2's burned out cars hanging from a single wire or Doom 3's everything falls to the ground like a sack of bricks?) The weapons? (HL2's Gravity Gun is INSANELY overpowered compared to any other weapon besides the rocket launcher.) The spawn locations? (Yes, this does matter.) The locations of certain weapons? (Again, it does have an effect.) Are you going to use a 'dark' engine (a la Doom 3) or a 'bright' engine (a la HL2)? Are there regulation keyboards and mice? (Some hardcore/professional gamers swear by five-button mice for better control.) What about regulation hardware? (Higher FPS do matter at a professional level.) What if the game crashes/glitches? (Do you restart the match because one of the players clipped through the floor?)
You can only speculate how much work Civil Protection, or likely the citizens themselves, put forth to keep the city clean - especially in contrast to how filthy the rest of the game is, by in large.
That alone shoots down your own argument and underlines the problem with HL2's storytelling. At the very least in HL1 you told the very bare bones of what was going on (experiment gone bad, need to get out) but in HL2 all you know is that aliens invaded Earth and for some unknown reason after several years of fighting the entire underground resistance are worse fighters than the French.
Where did the Antlions come from? What happened to the Earth's military forces? Why hasn't Earth turned into an oversized model of Iraq? Why aren't the resistance putting IEDs in the street? Where are my machine guns? My sniper rifles? Why the hell am I using a damned crossbow as a sniping weapon?
What happened to Corporal Shepard (from HL: Opposing Forces)? Where has Barney been? Shouldn't the Combine have known that he was at Black Mesa in HL1? Where did Dr. Breen come from? (He is never mentioned in HL1.) Etc, etc etc.
Were you surprised by its success in the US, or had you planned for it?
Oooh no, this came as a really big surprise. We were actually stunned and asked to double and triple check the figures. I always thought that, in the US, people liked simple stories like in Hollywood movies.
Screw Hollywood, they've been out of touch with what their audiences want for years. Where are my 'bad/lukewarm endings' in movies? Why the hell does the one girl always live when ten other guys die? Why does Hollywood even put guys in action movies if they're all going to simply die before the end?
Same with video games. Why does one hero/heroine always manage to save the world single-handedly? What about the hundreds of other NPCs? Why doesn't anyone (important) DIE and STAY DEAD? Storylines in movies and video games are just plain boring as hell these days. Where are my Alfred Hitchcock style storylines where the hero FAILS to stop the evil plot and merely succeeds in simply killing the villain?
Considering the size difference between the two countries alone, the fact that these countries are leaving the U.S. in the dust in terms of wireless internet service is no surprise.
And if you want to nitpick, Pakistan has a much more hostile terrain, a lack of already existing infrastructure and by doing this they kill two (or three) birds with one stone. (A cheap easy voice-over-IP telephone infrastructure, cheap easy wireless national internet service and arguably a relatively cheap investment in the long term future.) Whereas the U.S. has a (relatively) friendly terrain, a pre-existing infrastructure of both phone lines and cable lines and would cost far, far more than what Pakistan is paying because of the political attention it would recieve (read : political mess).
There are plenty of instances in WoW where you'll have to use a large set of abilities to manage to succeed. Fail, and you can try again very quickly instead of packing up and waiting until tomorrow.
Wow, do you even play World of Warcraft? The end-game in WoW is considered to be the ABSOLUTE WORST of all MMOs. When you're talking about 20 or 40 man raids, it takes HOURS just for everyone to gather together, get to the instance area and then actually enter (god forbid you're on a PvP server and run into a bloodthirsty, bored enemy guild in which case you can tack on several more hours since you can't start until everyone is rezed and enters).
Oh and gear doesn't matter? Then explain why the difference between a group of level 60 players fully equiped in blue gear is so easily defeated by a group of level 60 players. You don't even have to play the game to realize this. Blizzard's offical forums are so heavily flooded complaining about balance issues that threats are regularly deleted without notice or warning.
Actually the Warcraft series has one of the most confusing, contradictory and undefined storylines in recent video gaming history. The change from Warcraft 2 to 3 alone added FOUR different sides (the Tauren, the Night Elves, the Naga and the Infernal). World of Warcraft added three more (Dwarves, Gnomes and Trolls) to the fray.
Warcraft 1 + 2 had a barebones backstory involving the Dark Portal and an Orc invasion. Then Warcraft 3 sudden talks about the Undead and a conspiracy to conquer the world, the Night Elves (and an entire continent being 'discovered'), the Tauren (who saw this coming), the Naga (wow, could they add anything more unexpected?), alien invaders from outer space (ok, I guess they can), the Orcs really being under the control of the alien invaders (now they're stretching it), Dwarves and Gnomes becoming their own unique playable races, Ogres breaking away from the Orcs, etc etc etc.
Seriously, if you step back and think about it Blizzard OVEREXTENDED themselves when it came to the storyline in Warcraft 3. World of Warcraft just makes things worse since it is considered to be a sequel of the Warcraft storyline the PvP/PvE server differences are contradictory. Technically theres a truce but on PvP servers its open war, on PvE servers its virtually a peace treaty and in Battlegrounds its a war zone. Not to mention Quest storylines that involve biological warfare, chemical warfare, kidnappings/rescue missions, invasions and assassinations on both sides.
(Not to mention the Blood Elves, the Draenei or the Pandarians, two of which are becoming new races in World of Warcraft so you can bump that number up to five.)
If the Brittish had won the Revolutionary War, Americans would have been portrayed as thieves and murderers.
Wow, you need to brush up on your American history. Americans were thieves (Boston Tea Party) and murderers (tarring and feathering tax collectors) before, during and after the war. The only reason most historians overlook this was because the British government never effectively set up a judicial system in the American colonies in the first place. (Salem Witch Trials anyone?)
If the Iraqis had won the Iraq war, we would have been portrayed as invading infedels. But we're not. They are. I can go on.
Which Iraq war? If you mean the Gulf War of 1991, we were/still are portrayed as invading infidels for invading Iraq when the U.N. resolution was simply to throw Iraqi troops out of Kuwait. (Which is why we never entered Baghdad and overthrew Saddam then.) If you mean the 2003 Iraq War, we ARE being called invading infidels for invading without U.N. approval. Whats your point?
we can make games where you can (and are encouraged to) kill everybody in sight, like GTA.
Wow, what game are you playing? Last time I checked when I tried killing civilians in GTA the police/FBI/army came and kicked my ass with M-16s, shotguns, armed helicopters, tanks and fighter jets.
True, but Battlefield 1942 also has the least realistic physics in any WW2 game, no matter how well you do in the single-player campaign mode it continues on the assumption that you always seem to lose no matter how well you do and I'm no military buff but I'm pretty sure WW2 fighter-bombers weren't capable of dropping dozens of bombs without having to rearm. (Where are the Japanese samurai swords? The Nazi Youth troops? The SS troops? The invasion of Poland or Belgium/France campaigns?)
And yet we have WW2 and Vietnam simulators out there. They're some of the hottest selling games on the market, in fact. Not a lot of outrage on that front. And when it comes to being evil in games, there seems to some interest in it. What a way to explore our humanity, eh?
No offense but if you consider games like Call of Duty, Medal of Honor or Vietcong to be WW2 and Vietnam "simulators" you've got a very rosy view of war.
I have yet to play a WW2 game where you fight against Vichy French troops, to liberate a Nazi concentration camp, play as a Russian commissar and shoot Russian soldiers for retreating, to play as a civilian in London during the Nazi Blitz and I have yet to use any vehicle that isn't stuck on rails and doesn't use arcade-ish physics. (I'm looking at you Battlefield 1942/Vietnam.) Hell I have yet to play a WW2 game that lets me fight as a Nazi! Where are the Italian/Japanese/Nazi campaigns in these games?
When there are WW2/Vietnam games that lets me shoot civilians (intentionally or unintentionally) and not cause me to lose automatically, then we can talk about how video games that let you do 'evil' things should be censored (either by the creators/the ESRB/the government).
A further comment claimed that in America, companies have the right to lay you off, and stop your pay -tomorrow-
The devil is in the details but the general rule of thumb is, no they can't. Unless you COMPLETELY screw things up (the higher up you go the more likely you have a severance package prepared in which case your fine even if you get fired so don't cite management/board of directors screw ups) they can't fire you on the spot without good reason. Theres always special cases where it can be done (declaring bankruptcy is always popular) but overall it doesn't happen because it can always backfire badly against the company.
If its a small company its easy to cite racial/gender discrimination (one female/Asian employee and ten guys/white Caucasians and the female/Asian gets fired?), if you've been with the company for a number of years and without warning you can cite age discrimination (oh you'll qualify for full benefits and then retire in 6 months? FIRED!), if its done just before or after a project is completed you can cite intentional sabotage (why was I fired for 'incompetence' after spending 6 months on/just before handing in important project X), etc etc etc. Obviously proving this stuff can be difficult but thats why you keep paper trails the length of interstate highways on record. (And if you low enough on the ladder to not have to deal with a paper trails chances are you're in a unstable job in the first place.)
I watched the Sony press conference yesterday and that was a total failure (wtf they copy Nintendo's motion sensor after mocking them?) but I think Nintendo's press conference could've gone better. Admittedly, I didn't think they would announce the launch date or price of the Wii (just in case Microsoft decides to announce a price cut later), a lot of the stuff they've showed has already been talked about. Here's my short list of what Nintendo SHOULD have shown:
1. 3rd party add-ons for the Wii controller. Lets get an idea of what developers are doing and show us that they're serious about supporting the Wii. 2. Give us a glimpse at how the older NES, SNES, Genesis, etc games will be played (the Wii controller flat-out lacks the proper number of buttons). 3. Wheres the multiplayer? Yes there was that tennis multiplayer match near the end but it seems like they didn't talk about it much overall. 4. Three words : Super Smash Bros. Where was it? 5. Less pre-made pre-arranged (gameplay?) videos, more on-stage demonstrations. (We don't want another 'was the Killzone video real time?' debate.)
Am I the only one here who really likes what he sees? Great HD graphics, Blu-Ray, hard disk standard on ALL models, online, wireless controllers, PS2 and PS1 full compatibility... this is a nice system.
HD graphics : I'm not seeing a big improvement. In one case it looks like a step BACKWARD. Just take a look at their own comparison slide http://www.joystiq.com/media/2006/05/DSC_2355.JPG! The PS3 version look like a pasty white guy!
Blu-Ray : One word : Hype. There has yet to be a game that spans more than 1 DVD and I'm not spending $500 for a movie player AND having to re-buy my movie collection.
Hard drive : Xbox did it years ago. The Xbox360 threw the ball away on it but considering the PS3 is priced at $500~$600, Sony just threw the ball back at Microsoft.
Online : Old news and Sony has a poor record of online gameplay. Its SOE division is one of the worst in terms of service and considering they DOMINATED last generation with the PS2, Xbox Live CRUSHED the PS2 in terms of online marketshare.
Wireless controllers : Two words : Nintendo Wavebird. And the Xbox360's controllers are wireless as well. Sony is really the last man out in this case. (And this doesn't count third party controllers.)
PS2 and PS1 full compatibility : Considering a PS1 is dirt cheap and insanely plentiful (I've seenen package deals including 10 games and the system for $50 USD) and the inevitable price drop to the all important $100 mark for the PS2 near/after the PS3's launch, this isn't really important.
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Yet. "No other announcements have been made [yet]."
Face it, as far as anyone knows, Assassin's Creed was just a trailer. There was no gameplay, no word on whether it would use the motion sensor and anybody who compared the graphics from the 360 and PS3 knows its not hard to imagine the game running on the 360 (at least in the graphics department.)
Actually there weren't that many PS1 + PS2 hit exclusives. Sure there was the Final Fantasy games and the occasional gems, Disgaea, God of War, .hack series, but compared to Nintendo's anything with Mario, Metroid, Zelda and Super Smash Bros games, Sony doesn't have much. (Squaresoft/SquareEnix never 100% supported Sony either, remember Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicals and the Dragon Quest Slime games? Konami made Castlevania games for the GBA and DS, Capcom ports games to every system they can and Namco keeps flip-flopping on PS2 support.)
Prices come down over time.
The PS2 has been out for almost 6 years now and it still hasn't hit the $100 mark. I'll believe Sony will price cut the PS3 when it actually happens.
also, the Ps3 doesn't NEED a "halo." Microsoft had TWO and they were still utterly, totally crushed last round. The titles they DO have (or are expected to have) are more than sufficient.
The Halo games are credited with single-handedly selling millions of systems. It took the PS2 about 3 years to beat the Dreamcast and that was with almost no competition from Nintendo and Microsoft. That doesn't speak of confidence.
Blu-Ray won't go exactly the same way as it's in a different stage of its lifecycle than DVD was when it launched, but even those who have never heard of it but might want a Ps3 will more than likely buy or rent a disc just to see what the fuss is about if they have access to an HDTV.
Except that most people don't have access to an HDTV thus rendering your argument moot. HDTVs have less than a 5% marketshare penetration rate worldwide. VERY few people are going to see the difference in quality.
Price isn't usually an issue for early adopters ESPECIALLY during holiday season, as the buying frenzies on ebay for the Ps2 and 360 prove. Those machines were going for easily double MSRP.
Irrelevant. The PS2 and 360 both suffered manufacturing shortages initially and the PS2 suffered from a sharp decline in demand following Christmas (wait lists were supposed to extend into April but ended up being filled up by January) whereas the 360 CONTINUES to enjoy a high demand, low supply advantage (at least in the U.S.)
As for decline in quality, Sony's Bravia sets were flying off the shelves when they were introduced and still are...and current buzz is that they're excellent sets. So any rumors of a quality drop certainly haven't appeared to affect the buying mainstream.
Wow, way to make yourself look smart by citing other markets. Sony is getting SPANKED in the TV manufacturing business. Dead pixels, poor quality, competition from Chinese manufacturers are all beating down Sony. Marketshare-wise, Sony is declining, fast. Price-wise, Sony cannot compete. Quality-wise, theres talk of Sony being re-listed as second-rate.
Sony is coming off of their second consecutive massive victory in the console area with the #1 and #2 most successful consoles in history. They have a nearly limitless stable of proven franchises on board, and have hit the point where "Playstation" is a household word. On the other hand, Nintendo has been steadily losing market share (in the console area...I'm aware the GBA and DS are quite successful) since the SNES launched and Microsoft is just coming off of losing $4 Billion on their initial venture into the industry with no signs of gaining ANY marketshare almost a year after launch. Of the three players involved this time around, Sony isn't the one that has to worry about coming in last place.
Holy crap, how much did Sony pay you to write this? The PS1 and PS2 are NOT the 'most successful consoles in history'. The NES used to control about 95% of the marketshare and the SNES vs Genesis war is practically a textbook moment in the history of electronic econ
Actually its more like your girlfriend calling you, yelling 'Help m-' and then hearing the phone being crushed before the line is cut. Then calling her home phone, her workplace and her friends to learn no one knows where she is or whats shes doing.
Example: Boy who cried wolf.
Except in some "versions" of the story the boy is killed and eaten by the wolf... Or in the kiddy versions, the wolf eats the sheep/chickens/whatever the kid is supposed to be protecting.
Uh, not really. Carnegie's complete and utter destruction of the unions cripped industrial growth for decades due to his tactics. The lack of a minimum wage (pay wages in the CENTS per day and the Ford Model T was priced at a 'cheap' $350), the methodology of simply decreasing workers' pay instead of increasing productivity or quality (sales are down? Fire some workers while maintaining the status quo!) and his own self-proclaimed "it was necessary at the time for the growth of the nation" while creating a permanent lower working class group of people in the U.S. (Oh yeah, building libraries is real helpful at a time when child labor is commonplace.)
Carnegie was a fool, even in retrospect. By the time his charities were felt by the masses, his company had already left its mark. Corporate intimidation and bullying was used for decades (and arguably to this day). Violence between factory owners and factory workers sparked on and off WELL into the 20th century. Unions have NEVER shaken off the image of essentially being puppet creations made by the corporations for calming the masses (unions in the U.S. are a joke compared to European counterparts and in many cases are being dismantled in some industries).
The fact is there aren't that many countries capable of making nukes.
About a dozen, half of which are either unstable (India and Pakistan), have unsecure nuclear arsenals (Russia) and/or have uncertain loyalties (France and Germany have been sending mixed signals lately.) Theres also South Africa but thats an entirely different discussion.
If either the US or Israel were nuked, they would have a very short list of suspects and be inclined to bomb the most likely first and do the paperwork later.
It took the U.S. about a month to go into Afghanistan and that was after YEARS of previous attacks (the '93 truck bombing of the WTC, the '98 embassy bombings in Africa.) I don't know where you got the idea that the U.S./Israel would nuke first, ask questions later.
When you have reason to believe that radical fundamentalists (India is a predominately Hindu nation while Pakistan is predominately Muslim, two religions with a centuries old grudge) which has already attacked a foreign nation takes up residence in your nuclear armed neighbor's backyard, your trigger finger gets itchy.
Except that they would deny ever launching it, claim that it was simply stolen by rogue terrorists and that their nation does not support or endorse the actions of said terrorist group. Any evidence gathering would take years to prove, let alone be brought to light. After all, The real world is not like a Tom Clancy novel.
After 9/11, Pakistan freaked out and began to lock the locks on their nuclear arsenal. A year afterward, reports that Pakistan had been helping North Korea develop nuclear weapons comes out. In international speak this says, 'we are unstable (we have security concerns regarding our nuclear arsenal), we crave war (peaceful nations don't share nuclear secrets with countries that are technically still at war) and we still have not taken steps to prevent a nuclear exchange despite these serious concerns (they're fighting a grudge that has lasted for half a century, armed with nukes and bedding with known terrorist groups.)'
India is just as bad. Pakistan border both Afghanistan AND Iran, two of the most unfriendly nations currently (remember all those reports about Al Qaeda reportedly escaping into India through the mountains?), so India is paranoid of the radicals/terrorists/refugees that have recently come into Pakistan. If the reports about Pakistan helping North Korea develop nuclear weapons is true, this could set nuclear talks back DECADES. In international speak this says, 'we are paranoid of Pakistan launching a first strike/pre-emptive attack against us (Pakistan has fewer nukes so they would want to do this to minimize damage in a nuclear counter-attack), we believe Pakistan is socially and politically unstable due to recent events (U.S. invasion of Afghanistan) and we do not believe that the international community would come to our aid in a serious confrontation (the U.N. is still in a pissing match against the U.S. for invading Iraq, North Korea has everyone second-guessing their intelligence agencies to avoid another "Iraq has WMDs!" fiasco and Iran has everyone kicking the crap out of each other trying to figure out what to do without losing their precious oil/without military action/without having the U.S. go off on its own again).
1. Black Mesa has a huge ripple effect on the rest of the world after the events of Half-Life 1, as the Combine open up portals world-wide, via its portal-network satellite. Aliens (from Xen) of all types are teleported into suburbs.
A huge population shift occurs as people move into the cities, protected by soldiers and barbed wire fences, to escape the monsters.
So are the aliens teleporting in randomly or not? The word randomly implied unpredictable so theres no way for people to simply flee into the cities for protection. (Unless the portals eventually close in which case, why doesn't the military simply push out after the initial shock?)
2. Using the established Xen-Earth portal network as transport gateways, The Combine launches a multi-pronged, all-out assault on the entire Earth, teleporting troops as well as drop-ships, gun-ships, and striders from Combine off-world outposts.
No evidence. Other than the portals in HL1 (which can be argued as a result of the alien artifact) and the one seenen at the end of HL2, theres no evidence of any transplanetary portal technology used (all the portals used in HL2 are relatively short-range seeing as you never go farther than a few city blocks). They could've simply invaded the old fashioned way through spaceships for all we know.
3. Breen formally "surrenders" Earth after 7 hours of combat between Mankind and the Combine.
Unless the world suddenly decided to form and unite under a 'world government' any type of "surrender" on a world-wide scale would never be accepted. (See: Iraq, only on a world scale.)
Actually the general concensus among developers was that the Xbox360 developer kits were hands down the best. The Wii kits got second place for being similar to the GC's system (read: no need to spend months learns an entirely new system). And the PS3 is ranked lower than the infamous Saturn dev kits (the fact that NO ONE has ever worked with the Cell let alone anything similar to it in the past isn't helping).
What about the physics? (HL2's burned out cars hanging from a single wire or Doom 3's everything falls to the ground like a sack of bricks?)
The weapons? (HL2's Gravity Gun is INSANELY overpowered compared to any other weapon besides the rocket launcher.)
The spawn locations? (Yes, this does matter.)
The locations of certain weapons? (Again, it does have an effect.)
Are you going to use a 'dark' engine (a la Doom 3) or a 'bright' engine (a la HL2)?
Are there regulation keyboards and mice? (Some hardcore/professional gamers swear by five-button mice for better control.)
What about regulation hardware? (Higher FPS do matter at a professional level.)
What if the game crashes/glitches? (Do you restart the match because one of the players clipped through the floor?)
No. Get over it. Microsoft is not going to launch a handheld, they're crazy not stupid.
That alone shoots down your own argument and underlines the problem with HL2's storytelling. At the very least in HL1 you told the very bare bones of what was going on (experiment gone bad, need to get out) but in HL2 all you know is that aliens invaded Earth and for some unknown reason after several years of fighting the entire underground resistance are worse fighters than the French.
Where did the Antlions come from? What happened to the Earth's military forces? Why hasn't Earth turned into an oversized model of Iraq? Why aren't the resistance putting IEDs in the street? Where are my machine guns? My sniper rifles? Why the hell am I using a damned crossbow as a sniping weapon?
What happened to Corporal Shepard (from HL: Opposing Forces)? Where has Barney been? Shouldn't the Combine have known that he was at Black Mesa in HL1? Where did Dr. Breen come from? (He is never mentioned in HL1.) Etc, etc etc.
Oooh no, this came as a really big surprise. We were actually stunned and asked to double and triple check the figures. I always thought that, in the US, people liked simple stories like in Hollywood movies.
Screw Hollywood, they've been out of touch with what their audiences want for years. Where are my 'bad/lukewarm endings' in movies? Why the hell does the one girl always live when ten other guys die? Why does Hollywood even put guys in action movies if they're all going to simply die before the end?
Same with video games. Why does one hero/heroine always manage to save the world single-handedly? What about the hundreds of other NPCs? Why doesn't anyone (important) DIE and STAY DEAD? Storylines in movies and video games are just plain boring as hell these days. Where are my Alfred Hitchcock style storylines where the hero FAILS to stop the evil plot and merely succeeds in simply killing the villain?
And if you want to nitpick, Pakistan has a much more hostile terrain, a lack of already existing infrastructure and by doing this they kill two (or three) birds with one stone. (A cheap easy voice-over-IP telephone infrastructure, cheap easy wireless national internet service and arguably a relatively cheap investment in the long term future.) Whereas the U.S. has a (relatively) friendly terrain, a pre-existing infrastructure of both phone lines and cable lines and would cost far, far more than what Pakistan is paying because of the political attention it would recieve (read : political mess).
Wow, do you even play World of Warcraft? The end-game in WoW is considered to be the ABSOLUTE WORST of all MMOs. When you're talking about 20 or 40 man raids, it takes HOURS just for everyone to gather together, get to the instance area and then actually enter (god forbid you're on a PvP server and run into a bloodthirsty, bored enemy guild in which case you can tack on several more hours since you can't start until everyone is rezed and enters).
Oh and gear doesn't matter? Then explain why the difference between a group of level 60 players fully equiped in blue gear is so easily defeated by a group of level 60 players. You don't even have to play the game to realize this. Blizzard's offical forums are so heavily flooded complaining about balance issues that threats are regularly deleted without notice or warning.
A former very high ranking Sega executive who worked on the Dreamcast and was apart of the group who wanted to get Sega out of the hardware business
He's virtually the Xbox/Xbox360's Reggie Fils-Aime (if you don't know who this is so soon after E3 you're in the wrong section of Slashdot)
He's the guy that showed off the Halo 2 and GTA4 tattoos as announcements (anyone claiming to be a gamer has at least 'heard of' this)
He has more achievements than this but these are his video gaming highlights.
Warcraft 1 + 2 had a barebones backstory involving the Dark Portal and an Orc invasion. Then Warcraft 3 sudden talks about the Undead and a conspiracy to conquer the world, the Night Elves (and an entire continent being 'discovered'), the Tauren (who saw this coming), the Naga (wow, could they add anything more unexpected?), alien invaders from outer space (ok, I guess they can), the Orcs really being under the control of the alien invaders (now they're stretching it), Dwarves and Gnomes becoming their own unique playable races, Ogres breaking away from the Orcs, etc etc etc.
Seriously, if you step back and think about it Blizzard OVEREXTENDED themselves when it came to the storyline in Warcraft 3. World of Warcraft just makes things worse since it is considered to be a sequel of the Warcraft storyline the PvP/PvE server differences are contradictory. Technically theres a truce but on PvP servers its open war, on PvE servers its virtually a peace treaty and in Battlegrounds its a war zone. Not to mention Quest storylines that involve biological warfare, chemical warfare, kidnappings/rescue missions, invasions and assassinations on both sides.
(Not to mention the Blood Elves, the Draenei or the Pandarians, two of which are becoming new races in World of Warcraft so you can bump that number up to five.)
Wow, you need to brush up on your American history. Americans were thieves (Boston Tea Party) and murderers (tarring and feathering tax collectors) before, during and after the war. The only reason most historians overlook this was because the British government never effectively set up a judicial system in the American colonies in the first place. (Salem Witch Trials anyone?)
If the Iraqis had won the Iraq war, we would have been portrayed as invading infedels. But we're not. They are. I can go on.
Which Iraq war? If you mean the Gulf War of 1991, we were/still are portrayed as invading infidels for invading Iraq when the U.N. resolution was simply to throw Iraqi troops out of Kuwait. (Which is why we never entered Baghdad and overthrew Saddam then.) If you mean the 2003 Iraq War, we ARE being called invading infidels for invading without U.N. approval. Whats your point?
we can make games where you can (and are encouraged to) kill everybody in sight, like GTA.
Wow, what game are you playing? Last time I checked when I tried killing civilians in GTA the police/FBI/army came and kicked my ass with M-16s, shotguns, armed helicopters, tanks and fighter jets.
True, but Battlefield 1942 also has the least realistic physics in any WW2 game, no matter how well you do in the single-player campaign mode it continues on the assumption that you always seem to lose no matter how well you do and I'm no military buff but I'm pretty sure WW2 fighter-bombers weren't capable of dropping dozens of bombs without having to rearm. (Where are the Japanese samurai swords? The Nazi Youth troops? The SS troops? The invasion of Poland or Belgium/France campaigns?)
No offense but if you consider games like Call of Duty, Medal of Honor or Vietcong to be WW2 and Vietnam "simulators" you've got a very rosy view of war.
I have yet to play a WW2 game where you fight against Vichy French troops, to liberate a Nazi concentration camp, play as a Russian commissar and shoot Russian soldiers for retreating, to play as a civilian in London during the Nazi Blitz and I have yet to use any vehicle that isn't stuck on rails and doesn't use arcade-ish physics. (I'm looking at you Battlefield 1942/Vietnam.) Hell I have yet to play a WW2 game that lets me fight as a Nazi! Where are the Italian/Japanese/Nazi campaigns in these games?
When there are WW2/Vietnam games that lets me shoot civilians (intentionally or unintentionally) and not cause me to lose automatically, then we can talk about how video games that let you do 'evil' things should be censored (either by the creators/the ESRB/the government).
The devil is in the details but the general rule of thumb is, no they can't. Unless you COMPLETELY screw things up (the higher up you go the more likely you have a severance package prepared in which case your fine even if you get fired so don't cite management/board of directors screw ups) they can't fire you on the spot without good reason. Theres always special cases where it can be done (declaring bankruptcy is always popular) but overall it doesn't happen because it can always backfire badly against the company.
If its a small company its easy to cite racial/gender discrimination (one female/Asian employee and ten guys/white Caucasians and the female/Asian gets fired?), if you've been with the company for a number of years and without warning you can cite age discrimination (oh you'll qualify for full benefits and then retire in 6 months? FIRED!), if its done just before or after a project is completed you can cite intentional sabotage (why was I fired for 'incompetence' after spending 6 months on/just before handing in important project X), etc etc etc. Obviously proving this stuff can be difficult but thats why you keep paper trails the length of interstate highways on record. (And if you low enough on the ladder to not have to deal with a paper trails chances are you're in a unstable job in the first place.)
1. 3rd party add-ons for the Wii controller. Lets get an idea of what developers are doing and show us that they're serious about supporting the Wii.
2. Give us a glimpse at how the older NES, SNES, Genesis, etc games will be played (the Wii controller flat-out lacks the proper number of buttons).
3. Wheres the multiplayer? Yes there was that tennis multiplayer match near the end but it seems like they didn't talk about it much overall.
4. Three words : Super Smash Bros. Where was it?
5. Less pre-made pre-arranged (gameplay?) videos, more on-stage demonstrations. (We don't want another 'was the Killzone video real time?' debate.)
HD graphics : I'm not seeing a big improvement. In one case it looks like a step BACKWARD. Just take a look at their own comparison slide http://www.joystiq.com/media/2006/05/DSC_2355.JPG! The PS3 version look like a pasty white guy!
Blu-Ray : One word : Hype. There has yet to be a game that spans more than 1 DVD and I'm not spending $500 for a movie player AND having to re-buy my movie collection.
Hard drive : Xbox did it years ago. The Xbox360 threw the ball away on it but considering the PS3 is priced at $500~$600, Sony just threw the ball back at Microsoft.
Online : Old news and Sony has a poor record of online gameplay. Its SOE division is one of the worst in terms of service and considering they DOMINATED last generation with the PS2, Xbox Live CRUSHED the PS2 in terms of online marketshare.
Wireless controllers : Two words : Nintendo Wavebird. And the Xbox360's controllers are wireless as well. Sony is really the last man out in this case. (And this doesn't count third party controllers.)
PS2 and PS1 full compatibility : Considering a PS1 is dirt cheap and insanely plentiful (I've seenen package deals including 10 games and the system for $50 USD) and the inevitable price drop to the all important $100 mark for the PS2 near/after the PS3's launch, this isn't really important.
Yeah, and we all saw how successful Asheron's Call 2 turned out to be while the first continues to function. A real breakaway success story there...