But what happens if the messenger IS someone whos part of the development team? I don't consider marketing to be part of a dev team and there have be cases where the DESIGNERS of the game will make these statements. Developers, not including execs or marketing people, are humans as well. You know how people always compare recent video games with art? Well just consider recent developers with artists, often times overzealous in their product.
This IS news worthy given the popularity of the game like you said, but it goes beyond that. You could compare this to having the location of a presidental debate given out weeks in advance and then suddenly having the place blown up by a terrorist a few days later. You KNOW an event is going to take place at X location on Y day, so you expect Z amount of protection in the area until after that event.
You'd THINK they would have serious security measures in place but in this case they didn't. Do it once (Doom 3 beta leak/Half-Life 2 source code hack), I hope you learned your lesson. Do it twice (Halo 2) or three times (GTA:San Andreas), wtf is going on? What next? A Quake 4 beta leak? Half-Life 2 version of Counter-Strike source code hacked? Final Fantasy XII English translation version leaked a week after the Japanese version is released?
It looks like Sony's new system will be the iPod of game consoles this holiday season
So its portable, runs on a long lasting battery time and has loads of awesome accessories? No? Screw that then, I'll just buy one of the older model used PS2s for dirt cheap when everyone starts selling them back. (And now you know why stores like EBGames virtually try to give away the old PS1 models.)
The -general- logic around game consoles is that it never moves around much, therefore regional lockouts shouldn't affect roughly 99.9% of your audience. The problem with this logic is that it assumes a large majority of non-localized games would never succeed outside of Japan (or Europe or the USA) leaving the more knowledgable gamers to having to import or pirate them.
The only reason its hasn't made a big splash yet is two parted. First, sometimes the big companies are right. While it'd be pretty funny to see some of the crazy, querky Japanese games here in the US, after the 20 or 30th Gundam/hentai/platformer game the novelty wears off. Secondly, because playing imported games usually requires mod chips, the majority of people out there simply do not want to pay for the extra installation charge, not to mention the new loss of Xbox Live if your hardware is tampered with.
Don't forget about other medias. After the broadcasting of War of the Worlds, radio got slammed and blaimed for causing a panic despite repeated notices of the broadcast being fictional. Then television media got turned down in the 80's and 90's after news reporters started running ahead of military personnel, getting themselves shot at, and then complaining about not being protected. Returned to the radio, again we see the radio being slammed with censorship against critics who protest against the government's policies. All this, newspaper censorship, more censorship against radio in the past, recent censorship of the internet, and a bag of chips to munch on while we wait and see some more censorship in the future.
Picture this : You're a chinese worker, and you do fairly well. Small home, family, job. All of the sudden, your home gets burned down. What do you do?
Call the insurance company? Doable, but you're still out of a home for no less than a month. Rent an apartment? Again doable, but still takes time. Move into a hotel/motel? Possible, but this is China chances are you don't have a car to drive back and forth from work to hotel/motel everyday, not to mention the threat of theft.
The most logical answer : Get help from your friends or family. 0-3 months is nothing if your house gets burned down. Some people do that just because they get kicked out of their apartments by their girlfriends/boyfriends/parents/landlord. 3-6 months is a bit annoy, but this is China, I doubt real estate is cheap. 6-12 months, you should be getting ready or ready to move out the moment you get a new place. Till then, enjoy Chinese hospitality and enjoy your family's/friend's company. One year is nothing when you look at American habits. If you know anyone who lives in a big city, chances are you've heard stories of "this roommate who's lives with another guy I know for years."
Or he really could have 'good luck' for the year. After all, if you suddenly heard that your brother or your friend's house suddenly burned down with no insurance, chances are you'd at least let him sleep over your house for a couple days. This is China where family is still considered to be the center, not the USA where family is just what you leech off of till you get a job/till you get kicked out.
Regarding the adult part, I have no clue why the cashier said that. As for the reciept and some ID part though, thats fairly standard stuff when it comes to pre-ordering and picking up stuff.
Anyone remember the old PlayChoice arcade machines? They were basicly arcade machines that ran emulated version of older games (most notably NES games). If they managed to do this in the past, why stop at only 3 games in a system? Classic games are nice, but considering the cost for only 3 games...
on the hacked characters themselves? The screenshots themselves don't offer much and almost no information on them (other than the fact that some are characters from the older games).
Lets say the game is back in production. How do they plan on maintaining expectations after Warhammer 40k Dawn of War was released? If you played Dawn of War, you got the basic idea was big army + big battles - micromanagement = fun. Now expand that do the MMO level. How do you create a MMO-Warhammer world without shrinking the world into the Final Fantasy XI size (you could walk across the ENTIRE world in less than 2 hours) nor making it insanely huge like World War II Online or Planetside (where you could spend 2 hours simply trying finding to find a battle)?
They should just sell the MMO code and work on a smaller scale Warhammer FPS instead. It'd be far easier and no doubt reach a much larger audience that way.
The fault is the hardcore readers who bitch and gripe about a certain news site not having 'the most recent' information up A.S.A.P. even if that information is not yet reliable. If news sites stopped making reviews of early buggy drivers, why not stop making previews? Just about every EA game keeps getting marked as 'could use more polish' or 'it'd be interesting to see what they do between now and launch day'. Yet when games from EA get released, they turn out to be buggy pieces of shit but succeed thanks to the hype machine. You can say this about every game, from the heavily hyped Doom 3 (which most people ended up flaming) to the silent yet still crashed and burned Breed (which was hyped to be a 'Halo killer').
Because if your consider SOE's track record with working with SWG, its not too hard to believe. After SOE pissed everyone off with their mass banning/kicking, Lucasarts was no doubt pissed off at SOE without even mentioning other disagreements (Jedis? Space combat? The fact that everyone jokes about being a cantina dancer?)
When you consider what Valve's record is, I'm not seeing any reason to even consider this. Here is Valve's record thus far (for the most part):
Half-Life
Sign up for a subscriber system from a company with a track record of one game? Yeah right. Valve hit the gold mine with Half-Life, but thus far they've proven to be nothing more than a company with producer problems and a sell-out who resorts to buying player-made stuff to support them.
The best FAQs predate the "web" and originated on usenet. They were extremely useful documents probably because they were not designed to be useful, they were designed to prevent the asking of stupid (I mean frequently asked) questions.
Thats not a very fair statement. Considering how few people used/know about/even remember usenet, you're talking about a very small minority. In you were to try writing a FAQ for say, how Slashdot is run, how easy do you think it'd be to write a FAQ to avoid stupid questions? People who used to use usenet were either do-it-yourself'ers or ask a more knowledgeable friend considering the lack of support at the same.
it doesn't say where it got those numbers. Not to sound like a fanboy but, given the fact that Halo was priced at $50 USD for about 2 years after its release and is still selling fairly strong, I wonder what the number would really look like. And then theres the number of people who will buy it off the shelf...
This argument can be reduced to a simple personal question:
What would you rather have? The government monitoring what spyware you download or companies having free reign to install whatever viruses, spyware, adware, backdoor exploits, password loggers and whatnot onto your computer because you didn't wanna read a 10+ page legal contract?
Spying has been done on the internet years now. NOW you complain about spying just because the government gets into it?
Actually, if you looked back on the previous news report, it notes that both SquareEnix and Optimum Online denied being the source of the problem and tried to push it onto the other. If anything, it was the consumers threatening to mass quit the game (which would be devastating for a pay-to-play game) which forced them to fix the problem.
Actually Bungie has hinted at the possibility that you will land on another 'Halo' in Halo 2. Also in the original Halo, if you listened the Monitor told you that there are 'others' Halos in the galaxy.
Save Earth? Probably. Save the galaxy? Maybe, but maybe he'll 'let' the Monitor activate the Halo in the Covenant's part of the galaxy and blow them away ending the war.
Perhaps someone can explain to me why this makes the United States and George W. Bush evil/stupid?
Because its easier and everyone else does it. Seriously.
Any educated person who watchs the news beyond Fox or CNN can tell you the U.S. and its citizens has its made despite the current economic problems and terrorist fears. But instead you get masses of Americans bitching about Bush for X reason every other week just because the media points it out to them.
N'Gai Croal
General Editor
Newsweek Magazine
N'Gai Croal lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Why is a general editor of a non-video game focused magazine commenting on this? If he was the editor of say, GMR, I'd give him some slack, but Newsweek?
Slashdot Mirror
But what happens if the messenger IS someone whos part of the development team? I don't consider marketing to be part of a dev team and there have be cases where the DESIGNERS of the game will make these statements. Developers, not including execs or marketing people, are humans as well. You know how people always compare recent video games with art? Well just consider recent developers with artists, often times overzealous in their product.
You'd THINK they would have serious security measures in place but in this case they didn't. Do it once (Doom 3 beta leak/Half-Life 2 source code hack), I hope you learned your lesson. Do it twice (Halo 2) or three times (GTA:San Andreas), wtf is going on? What next? A Quake 4 beta leak? Half-Life 2 version of Counter-Strike source code hacked? Final Fantasy XII English translation version leaked a week after the Japanese version is released?
So its portable, runs on a long lasting battery time and has loads of awesome accessories? No? Screw that then, I'll just buy one of the older model used PS2s for dirt cheap when everyone starts selling them back. (And now you know why stores like EBGames virtually try to give away the old PS1 models.)
The only reason its hasn't made a big splash yet is two parted. First, sometimes the big companies are right. While it'd be pretty funny to see some of the crazy, querky Japanese games here in the US, after the 20 or 30th Gundam/hentai/platformer game the novelty wears off. Secondly, because playing imported games usually requires mod chips, the majority of people out there simply do not want to pay for the extra installation charge, not to mention the new loss of Xbox Live if your hardware is tampered with.
Don't forget about other medias. After the broadcasting of War of the Worlds, radio got slammed and blaimed for causing a panic despite repeated notices of the broadcast being fictional. Then television media got turned down in the 80's and 90's after news reporters started running ahead of military personnel, getting themselves shot at, and then complaining about not being protected. Returned to the radio, again we see the radio being slammed with censorship against critics who protest against the government's policies. All this, newspaper censorship, more censorship against radio in the past, recent censorship of the internet, and a bag of chips to munch on while we wait and see some more censorship in the future.
Call the insurance company? Doable, but you're still out of a home for no less than a month. Rent an apartment? Again doable, but still takes time. Move into a hotel/motel? Possible, but this is China chances are you don't have a car to drive back and forth from work to hotel/motel everyday, not to mention the threat of theft.
The most logical answer : Get help from your friends or family. 0-3 months is nothing if your house gets burned down. Some people do that just because they get kicked out of their apartments by their girlfriends/boyfriends/parents/landlord. 3-6 months is a bit annoy, but this is China, I doubt real estate is cheap. 6-12 months, you should be getting ready or ready to move out the moment you get a new place. Till then, enjoy Chinese hospitality and enjoy your family's/friend's company. One year is nothing when you look at American habits. If you know anyone who lives in a big city, chances are you've heard stories of "this roommate who's lives with another guy I know for years."
Or he really could have 'good luck' for the year. After all, if you suddenly heard that your brother or your friend's house suddenly burned down with no insurance, chances are you'd at least let him sleep over your house for a couple days. This is China where family is still considered to be the center, not the USA where family is just what you leech off of till you get a job/till you get kicked out.
Regarding the adult part, I have no clue why the cashier said that. As for the reciept and some ID part though, thats fairly standard stuff when it comes to pre-ordering and picking up stuff.
Anyone remember the old PlayChoice arcade machines? They were basicly arcade machines that ran emulated version of older games (most notably NES games). If they managed to do this in the past, why stop at only 3 games in a system? Classic games are nice, but considering the cost for only 3 games...
Comparing building a porn site with a spam designed program is like comparing a petty theft crime with grand theft auto crime.
What, will you be dressed up as one of the marines?
on the hacked characters themselves? The screenshots themselves don't offer much and almost no information on them (other than the fact that some are characters from the older games).
They should just sell the MMO code and work on a smaller scale Warhammer FPS instead. It'd be far easier and no doubt reach a much larger audience that way.
I agree completely. The market is not ready for a pair of new handhelds. Therefore the most logical conclusion is that one of them will die out.
'Its all fun and games until someone gets hurt.'
The fault is the hardcore readers who bitch and gripe about a certain news site not having 'the most recent' information up A.S.A.P. even if that information is not yet reliable. If news sites stopped making reviews of early buggy drivers, why not stop making previews? Just about every EA game keeps getting marked as 'could use more polish' or 'it'd be interesting to see what they do between now and launch day'. Yet when games from EA get released, they turn out to be buggy pieces of shit but succeed thanks to the hype machine. You can say this about every game, from the heavily hyped Doom 3 (which most people ended up flaming) to the silent yet still crashed and burned Breed (which was hyped to be a 'Halo killer').
Because if your consider SOE's track record with working with SWG, its not too hard to believe. After SOE pissed everyone off with their mass banning/kicking, Lucasarts was no doubt pissed off at SOE without even mentioning other disagreements (Jedis? Space combat? The fact that everyone jokes about being a cantina dancer?)
Half-Life
Sign up for a subscriber system from a company with a track record of one game? Yeah right. Valve hit the gold mine with Half-Life, but thus far they've proven to be nothing more than a company with producer problems and a sell-out who resorts to buying player-made stuff to support them.
Thats not a very fair statement. Considering how few people used/know about/even remember usenet, you're talking about a very small minority. In you were to try writing a FAQ for say, how Slashdot is run, how easy do you think it'd be to write a FAQ to avoid stupid questions? People who used to use usenet were either do-it-yourself'ers or ask a more knowledgeable friend considering the lack of support at the same.
it doesn't say where it got those numbers. Not to sound like a fanboy but, given the fact that Halo was priced at $50 USD for about 2 years after its release and is still selling fairly strong, I wonder what the number would really look like. And then theres the number of people who will buy it off the shelf...
What would you rather have? The government monitoring what spyware you download or companies having free reign to install whatever viruses, spyware, adware, backdoor exploits, password loggers and whatnot onto your computer because you didn't wanna read a 10+ page legal contract?
Spying has been done on the internet years now. NOW you complain about spying just because the government gets into it?
Actually, if you looked back on the previous news report, it notes that both SquareEnix and Optimum Online denied being the source of the problem and tried to push it onto the other. If anything, it was the consumers threatening to mass quit the game (which would be devastating for a pay-to-play game) which forced them to fix the problem.
Save Earth? Probably. Save the galaxy? Maybe, but maybe he'll 'let' the Monitor activate the Halo in the Covenant's part of the galaxy and blow them away ending the war.
Because its easier and everyone else does it. Seriously.
Any educated person who watchs the news beyond Fox or CNN can tell you the U.S. and its citizens has its made despite the current economic problems and terrorist fears. But instead you get masses of Americans bitching about Bush for X reason every other week just because the media points it out to them.
General Editor
Newsweek Magazine
N'Gai Croal lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Why is a general editor of a non-video game focused magazine commenting on this? If he was the editor of say, GMR, I'd give him some slack, but Newsweek?