### Super Mario Brothers. Metroid. Zelda. Later, Super Smash Brothers, Paper Mario...
There was a time where Nintendo was not about endless sequels. All those games Nintendo has for the Wii are the same stuff they already had for the Gamecube, not even the graphics are all that different. If Nintendos games would have a continuous story line that might not be that bad, but Zelda is the same thing over and over again and it gets tiring.
Whatever happened to games like Pikmin, Starfox, YoshisIsland, StuntRaceFX, Waverace, PaperMario and stuff? I don't mean sequels to them, I mean fresh ideas with new characters, gameplay elements and stuff like those had back when they where originally released. There is absolutely nothing in the Nintendo line up that provides the same feeling that I had when watching the first seconds of Starfox, Mario64, PaperMario, Pikmin and friends. Today all Nintendo games feel like been there, done that.
I didn't buy a SNES to get a NES-redux, I didn't buy a N64 to buy a SNES-redux and I didn't buy a Gamecube to get a N64-redux. With the Wii however it totally feels like Gamecube-redux, hardware specs are way closer then they should be and so is the provided gameplay. Nintendo has that revolutionary controller at hand and the best they can come up with is adding waggle to Gamecube Zelda... not stuff that gets me excited.
That Nintendo has, yet again, this time more successful then ever, alienated all third parties makes the Wii of course not exactly look more interesting either.
PS: Yes, I am purposely ignoring all that Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Nintendogs stuff, since "hardcore" games are the topic, and those just don't fit.
There is still rumor floating around that Project HAMMER got canceled and maybe Disaster: Day of Crisis as well (haven't heard anything from them in a long while, even so playable demo of Hammer was already at last years E3). Endless Ocean is actually a sequel to Everblue1 and 2 from the PS2. Kirby hasn't been seen on consoles in a while, but handhelds had more then enough Kirbys and Kirby has the problem of being the same game over and over again, it was pretty cool on NES, but it just hasn't really changed much at all.
### Not sure why you'd say that Wii Sports isn't a good game.
Because those games are dumped down to a point where it just isn't interesting any more. Tennis without the ability to control the player just isn't my thing and well, I never liked sports games in the first place.
### Mario Strikers?
They had already one on the Gamecube that looked basically the same, I wasn't interested in it back then, so why should I now?
### Excite Truck?
Somewhat ok, I had however hoped for something less arcade like and with a little more of a simulation touch like ExciteBike64 and Waverace.
### Trauma Center, Mercury Meltdown, Rayman, the new Sonic game...
I could play Mercury Meltdown on my PSP, Trauma Center on my DS, I am not interested in Rayman to begin with and Sonic could exactly excite me either.
There isn't anything wrong with all those games on its own, they are however simply not interesting enough for a console purchase and yet they are the best the Wii has to offer.
### why would the fact that an excellent 3D platform features Mario turn you off?
It wouldn't, I still consider Mario64 by far the best 3D platformer around, Jak&Daxter and Ratchet&Clank don't even get close from that little bit I have played. The thing however is that MarioGalaxy looks like a mission-disc to MarioSunshine/Mario64, not like a new game. I mean, come on, this is Nintendo, they are famous for innovation, right? Why is it then that Little Big Planet looks a a lot fresher and more innovative then Galaxy? Platforming didn't stop with Mario64, there are still areas to explore, if nothing else, how about online multiplayer, coop and build in level editor or heck, what about Luigi, Yoshi and all that bunch? Its not rocket science, its what fans have wished for, for a long long time. Mario Galaxy however doesn't seem to provide any of that.
The issue isn't even MarioGalaxy alone, its that all games look like that, been there done that. Zelda:TP was an incredible boring and uninteresting game to play, since I already played way to many Zeldas before. I haven't even finished the last PaperMario on Gamecube, got bored half the way through, again I just finished Mario&Luigi before which is basically the same game, so why exactly should I get excited about the Wii one?
Looking at Nintendo games these days feels like Dejà Vu, been there done that, nothing interesting to see here, move along. And no, I am not claiming that Sony or Microsoft are without fault, but at least there I can see quite a few games that I haven't seen before, beside all those sequels.
PS: I am ignoring Wii Sports, Nintendogs and friends, because I don't even consider them games in the classical sense.
### is it *really* necessary to add a warning label of "DO NOT SHAKE THE CONSOLE WHILE PLAYING"???
Which other game console have you ever heard of scratching discs? PS2 can be positioned vertically as well, so can the PS3, ever heard of scratched discs there? I haven't. With Xbox360 forums are however full of reports thanks to its defective design. Its not a issue with having or not having a warning label, its an issue with broken hardware design, nothing else, blaming the user is simply the easy way out.
Beside, moving the console is really nothing extra ordinary, just try to insert the video or controller cable while its already running and woops, you might move the console accidentally in a way that killed the DVD.
When has it become acceptable for hardware to fail under which is perfectly normal use? I mean, come on, this is a game console it should be expected that it might be moved around.
Hardcore gamers care about games, not how much money Nintendo can make with the Wii and in terms of games so far the Wii is far away from being impressive.
How about new, innovative and good games? StarFox, StuntRaceFX, WaveRave, DonkeyKongCountry, YoshisIsland, Pikmin, PilotWings and all that stuff that Nintendo released once up on a time. I don't mean that I want exactly those games, I want games that have a similar amount of innovation and new features like those had when they first came out. I didn't buy Nintendo consoles in the past to get the same games as always, I did buy them to get new and interesting games. While Nintendo already got a little slow with that on the Gamecube, they completly failed on the Wii, there is nothing in sight that gets close to the glory of the past, just rehashed Gamecube stuff and casual titles.
### Metroid Prime, Zelda, and the Mario series are all very much not minigames.
They are not mini-games, but they are the same kind of games that I already played over and over again on past Nintendo consoles. There already have been multiple Metroids, Zelda, Marios, PaperMarios, MarioKarts and even SmashBros. They are not bad games, but I don't buy consoles to play the same games I already played some years ago. With the Wii its especially bad, since those games don't even look all that different, you really have to look closely to not mistake them for their Gamecube counterparts. That Nintendo games aren't exactly big on story either doesn't help. So instead of continuing a storyline, those games are just the same thing with a few details shuffled around.
There is close to nothing happening on the Wii when it comes to new franchises that are meant for the gamer.
### The console has fewer capabilities than a comparably-priced personal computer these days
Where can I get that $300 gaming PC where I don't have to care about driver installations, upgrades, patches and all that stuff and that is going to play games for the next few years? A simple Vista license eats already a third of that money.
### and it has only been the exclusive publication deals that have drawn people to buy the 360 at all.
Consoles are about who has the best games, this generation it seems to be Microsoft, you can't blame them for providing the best game offering, since that is essentially what gaming is all about.
And when you talk about monopoly, Nintendo has abused its one back then in the NES/SNES days quite a bit, Sony did try to push Bluray with the monopoly it got from the PS2 days and so on. Microsoft simply is better at securing exclusives then the rest so far and that has little to do with abusing monopolies, since that is was basically everybody is doing.
### is to spread information that makes it evident that a person is better off choosing products in true open markets.
When you want to spread lies, go ahead. But unless you can sell me that $300 gaming PC the XBox360 simply is the better offering. Sure, I would prefer if it would be an open platform, but there simply isn't a competing alternative that is an open platform in the same price range, so I pick the system that offers the best/most games.
PS: No, I am not a XBox360 owner, horrible hardware reliability still keeps me away, but that aside its the best gaming machine available today.
### Take of those rose-colored glasses when you're looking at the past, and you'll realize that it was exactly the same back then as it is now:
I don't think so. Back then the market and the development studios where much smaller. You had EA back then, but they where nothing like the big ugly beast they have become today. You simply didn't have those huge all-dominating companies, instead a whole bunch of smaller ones. Thanks to the smaller budget experimentation was much more doable then today. That of course doesn't mean that everything back then was great, but it definitvly was quite a bit different then today.
I would say back then a lot of video games where inspired by real-life, books or movies, since there really wasn't much video game history to look at, today on the other side video games are for most part inspired by video games and everything ends up looking quite a lot a like for that very reason.
The golden age for me would be 1990-1995, 2002-2007 just doesn't hold up to all the interesting stuff that happened back then.
Nope, its not even an analogy, its a simple fact. The difference between realworld and digital world is that copying is free in the digital one. You don't rape a child by doing "cp porn.jpg new_porn.jpg".
There are certainly games with better storylines, better gameplay, better graphics, better sounds, more repeatability and more uniqueness around then OOT, even all factors combined. Thing however is, if you have a great story, it might get to complicated for kids to understand it and thus enjoy it, "kill Ganon" on the other side is simple enough for everybody and still provides a little bit of depth to not look completly stupid. Same with gameplay, more options, more freedom and such, might make a more interesting game, but will also stop some people from playing the game, since it gets to complicated. And so it goes on and on.
Zelda:OoT manages to successfully balance out most of these factors to create a game with mass appeal.
There's a minor problem with this idea: email is infamously insecure [...] Forging emails is one of the easiest script kiddie tricks out there.
First of all, we *already* use email to authenticate on basically everything on the web. If you forgot your password, the server will send you a new one via unencrypted mail. The only exceptions are high security things like banking, where things will get send by snail mail instead of email. Secondly, forging emails is a non-issue. You click 'login', server sends you an auth-token, you login with that. If somebody forgets that server mail, he doesn't gain any access at all. If he intercepts that mail then that indeed might be a problem, but you could lock-down the auth token to a specific IP address, making it worthless for him or go all the way and send PGP mail. There is never any mail send from the user to the server.
As mentioned this scheme isn't anything new, its simply what we already doing, just that instead of only sending mail when somebody forgot his password, you would send mail on every login, thus no password at all, just secure time and IP locked auth tokens.
This really sounds like a rather useless toy solution, since its easily cracked by brute force or if they make it secure enough to not be crackable, it would be a hell of a lot more uncomfortable then a real password.
Anyway, I think the real solution is much easier and already half the way implemented: Email!
On almost each and every side where you login with a password, you have to register your email address. If you lose your password, you let yourself send a new one via email. So in reality there is only one password for everything and that is the one that protects your email account, all the other passwords are really just placeholder that can be changed and recovered at will once you have access to the email account. So why not automate that process? The server where you request a login, sends some magic-string to your email account and you then use that magic-string to authenticate to your server account. If normal email doesn't feel secure enough, use GPG and friends. While this might be not so perfect with a normal mail client, the whole process could be fully automated, all the magic-strings that you get by mail could automatically be fetched and then used by your webbrowser, so that you would just have to click 'login' on a webpage instead of typing a password. Your email hoster would become an authentication server.
The only downside I see is that you might not want to use your email account on an untrustworthy client, while some blogs comment system password would be invaluable enough to use it there, but that should be solvable by either using secondary less important email addresses then your primary one or by allowing restricted access to your email account via an alternative password.
### If we assume that Einstein was right, and faster than light speed travel is not possible, then isn't manned space flight pretty much impossible?
Nope, with todays tech (Nuclear Fission Propulsion) we could already reach the next star in just 50 years. Thats not fast enough to do the trip on a weekend, but its already good enough for manned spaceflight. FTL travel would certainly be nice to have, but its not needed for space flight to other planets, it would just speed them up a bit.
### which cost under US$2000 three years ago. New games are stressing the system, so I'll have to upgrade to a faster CPU and graphics card (another $600) this year.
A game console costs between $200 - $600 and lasts you for five years or more. There are certainly more expensive hobbies then PC gaming, but then there are also much cheaper solution to play a game.
### Even if 10% of all Xboxes Microsoft ships are faulty (which they aren't)
What makes you think so? Given all the anecdotal stories about broken XBox360s, friends with broken ones and friends of friends with broken ones and very few stories of people actually being happy with their one and never heard about a fault, I would bet that the failure rate is at least that high if not higher.
One issue that might screw the numbers up however are the refurbished units, assuming that the repairs actually didn't fix the core of the problem, many of those failing XBoxes might be the same units, they just fail over and over again by different customers after being refurbished and send back.
Anyway, no matter if this story is true or not, there is no denying that XBox360 failure rate is way higher then it should be and unless Microsoft starts to talk a little truth in that aspect I am not going to buy one anytime soon, even so I would like to.
### Psygnosis contacted him and asked him to take off his game from the web.
"Copycat Lemmings" as it was called I think was a direct rip-off, it even copied a few of the graphics from what I know. So it wasn't just a Lemmings clone, it was copyright violation, trademark violation and all that stuff.
### no more lemmings games have been produced
There has been a very steady stream of Lemmings games over the years (Lemmings2, Lemmings3, 3D Lemmings, Lemmings Paintball, Lomax, LemmingsRevolution) and just recently Lemmings1 got a remake for PS2, PS3 and PSP, there also where numerous ports spread across all kinds of platforms over the years.
Beside, there are a ton of Lemmings clones on the net that never got touched by Psygnosis as well has a few commercial Lemmings-like games that didn't get touched either (Troddlers). So its not like they are going against any recycling of their gameplay elements.
### They're not charging to cover the service, they're charging to keep the quality of the service up.
Thing is they are charging quite a bit, $50 might not sound much, but assuming the Xbox360 has a life of 5 years that makes your $400 XBox360 suddenly cost $650, makes the PS3 look not so expensive any more.
True, but they don't do any clear separation between Tier1 and Tier2 in their requirements, which might simply mean that if you don't meet those requirements you will become Tier2 instead of left out. But we have to wait and see for further news to get the details, at least now there is some hope for indie development, which there wasn't before.
The german USK costs around 250-1500 , depending on the length and complexity of the title. The BPjM will ban your game for free. No idea about BBFC, PEGI and whatever other rating organizations might be around there if you want to publish a title outside of the USA.
As of April 2, we have two categories for Wii developer status, Tier 1 and Tier 2. Tier 1 is focused on existing developers who have shipped games in the console/handheld space. Tier 2 is for startups, and other experienced software companies who have not yet shipped games. The designation of Tier 1 or Tier 2 for your company will be at Nintendo's discretion.
This whole Tier 1 and Tier 2 thingy is new and it looks like to open the door for independent developers, you still have to sell a piece of your soul, but they no longer require you to already be a developer to get started, so the chicken&egg thing is solved.
### Name one - just one - created for the unrestricted PC market.
Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Director's Cut available via online distribution in the US, rated AO. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, even so removed from the shelves and rereleased later with M rating.
The issue with AO is that you can't sell it, its nice that you are allowed to sell it on PC in the first place as opposed to consoles, but you still won't get into the shelfs at the big retailers, which means you can basically forget to sell any decent amount of it. Which means publishers won't even touch anything that gets close to AO, you simply can't make money with it. Not because nobody wants it, but because the restrictions make it impossible to sell and thanks to the restrictions developers will of course stay away from doing anything AO as well.
The real issue in the end isn't even that AO basically means things are banned, the issue is that you get AO for pretty harmless stuff, i.e. if a game involves sex and shows it on screen then its instant AO, if a movie does the same on the other side its R, not NC-17. And just for comparison, most of those stuff that gets AO in the USA, gets an 'age 16' rating over here in Germany instead of 'age 18' or being banned.
Slashdot Mirror
### Super Mario Brothers. Metroid. Zelda. Later, Super Smash Brothers, Paper Mario...
There was a time where Nintendo was not about endless sequels. All those games Nintendo has for the Wii are the same stuff they already had for the Gamecube, not even the graphics are all that different. If Nintendos games would have a continuous story line that might not be that bad, but Zelda is the same thing over and over again and it gets tiring.
Whatever happened to games like Pikmin, Starfox, YoshisIsland, StuntRaceFX, Waverace, PaperMario and stuff? I don't mean sequels to them, I mean fresh ideas with new characters, gameplay elements and stuff like those had back when they where originally released. There is absolutely nothing in the Nintendo line up that provides the same feeling that I had when watching the first seconds of Starfox, Mario64, PaperMario, Pikmin and friends. Today all Nintendo games feel like been there, done that.
I didn't buy a SNES to get a NES-redux, I didn't buy a N64 to buy a SNES-redux and I didn't buy a Gamecube to get a N64-redux. With the Wii however it totally feels like Gamecube-redux, hardware specs are way closer then they should be and so is the provided gameplay. Nintendo has that revolutionary controller at hand and the best they can come up with is adding waggle to Gamecube Zelda... not stuff that gets me excited.
That Nintendo has, yet again, this time more successful then ever, alienated all third parties makes the Wii of course not exactly look more interesting either.
PS: Yes, I am purposely ignoring all that Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Nintendogs stuff, since "hardcore" games are the topic, and those just don't fit.
There is still rumor floating around that Project HAMMER got canceled and maybe Disaster: Day of Crisis as well (haven't heard anything from them in a long while, even so playable demo of Hammer was already at last years E3). Endless Ocean is actually a sequel to Everblue1 and 2 from the PS2. Kirby hasn't been seen on consoles in a while, but handhelds had more then enough Kirbys and Kirby has the problem of being the same game over and over again, it was pretty cool on NES, but it just hasn't really changed much at all.
### Not sure why you'd say that Wii Sports isn't a good game.
Because those games are dumped down to a point where it just isn't interesting any more. Tennis without the ability to control the player just isn't my thing and well, I never liked sports games in the first place.
### Mario Strikers?
They had already one on the Gamecube that looked basically the same, I wasn't interested in it back then, so why should I now?
### Excite Truck?
Somewhat ok, I had however hoped for something less arcade like and with a little more of a simulation touch like ExciteBike64 and Waverace.
### Trauma Center, Mercury Meltdown, Rayman, the new Sonic game...
I could play Mercury Meltdown on my PSP, Trauma Center on my DS, I am not interested in Rayman to begin with and Sonic could exactly excite me either.
There isn't anything wrong with all those games on its own, they are however simply not interesting enough for a console purchase and yet they are the best the Wii has to offer.
### why would the fact that an excellent 3D platform features Mario turn you off?
It wouldn't, I still consider Mario64 by far the best 3D platformer around, Jak&Daxter and Ratchet&Clank don't even get close from that little bit I have played. The thing however is that MarioGalaxy looks like a mission-disc to MarioSunshine/Mario64, not like a new game. I mean, come on, this is Nintendo, they are famous for innovation, right? Why is it then that Little Big Planet looks a a lot fresher and more innovative then Galaxy? Platforming didn't stop with Mario64, there are still areas to explore, if nothing else, how about online multiplayer, coop and build in level editor or heck, what about Luigi, Yoshi and all that bunch? Its not rocket science, its what fans have wished for, for a long long time. Mario Galaxy however doesn't seem to provide any of that.
The issue isn't even MarioGalaxy alone, its that all games look like that, been there done that. Zelda:TP was an incredible boring and uninteresting game to play, since I already played way to many Zeldas before. I haven't even finished the last PaperMario on Gamecube, got bored half the way through, again I just finished Mario&Luigi before which is basically the same game, so why exactly should I get excited about the Wii one?
Looking at Nintendo games these days feels like Dejà Vu, been there done that, nothing interesting to see here, move along. And no, I am not claiming that Sony or Microsoft are without fault, but at least there I can see quite a few games that I haven't seen before, beside all those sequels.
PS: I am ignoring Wii Sports, Nintendogs and friends, because I don't even consider them games in the classical sense.
### is it *really* necessary to add a warning label of "DO NOT SHAKE THE CONSOLE WHILE PLAYING"???
Which other game console have you ever heard of scratching discs? PS2 can be positioned vertically as well, so can the PS3, ever heard of scratched discs there? I haven't. With Xbox360 forums are however full of reports thanks to its defective design. Its not a issue with having or not having a warning label, its an issue with broken hardware design, nothing else, blaming the user is simply the easy way out.
Beside, moving the console is really nothing extra ordinary, just try to insert the video or controller cable while its already running and woops, you might move the console accidentally in a way that killed the DVD.
When has it become acceptable for hardware to fail under which is perfectly normal use? I mean, come on, this is a game console it should be expected that it might be moved around.
### Wii Sports, Wii Music, the Wii Balance Board...
Those aren't what I call good games. They attract the casual gamers, no doubt about that, but they don't really provide much beyond that.
Hardcore gamers care about games, not how much money Nintendo can make with the Wii and in terms of games so far the Wii is far away from being impressive.
How about new, innovative and good games? StarFox, StuntRaceFX, WaveRave, DonkeyKongCountry, YoshisIsland, Pikmin, PilotWings and all that stuff that Nintendo released once up on a time. I don't mean that I want exactly those games, I want games that have a similar amount of innovation and new features like those had when they first came out. I didn't buy Nintendo consoles in the past to get the same games as always, I did buy them to get new and interesting games. While Nintendo already got a little slow with that on the Gamecube, they completly failed on the Wii, there is nothing in sight that gets close to the glory of the past, just rehashed Gamecube stuff and casual titles.
### Metroid Prime, Zelda, and the Mario series are all very much not minigames.
They are not mini-games, but they are the same kind of games that I already played over and over again on past Nintendo consoles. There already have been multiple Metroids, Zelda, Marios, PaperMarios, MarioKarts and even SmashBros. They are not bad games, but I don't buy consoles to play the same games I already played some years ago. With the Wii its especially bad, since those games don't even look all that different, you really have to look closely to not mistake them for their Gamecube counterparts. That Nintendo games aren't exactly big on story either doesn't help. So instead of continuing a storyline, those games are just the same thing with a few details shuffled around.
There is close to nothing happening on the Wii when it comes to new franchises that are meant for the gamer.
### The console has fewer capabilities than a comparably-priced personal computer these days
Where can I get that $300 gaming PC where I don't have to care about driver installations, upgrades, patches and all that stuff and that is going to play games for the next few years? A simple Vista license eats already a third of that money.
### and it has only been the exclusive publication deals that have drawn people to buy the 360 at all.
Consoles are about who has the best games, this generation it seems to be Microsoft, you can't blame them for providing the best game offering, since that is essentially what gaming is all about.
And when you talk about monopoly, Nintendo has abused its one back then in the NES/SNES days quite a bit, Sony did try to push Bluray with the monopoly it got from the PS2 days and so on. Microsoft simply is better at securing exclusives then the rest so far and that has little to do with abusing monopolies, since that is was basically everybody is doing.
### is to spread information that makes it evident that a person is better off choosing products in true open markets.
When you want to spread lies, go ahead. But unless you can sell me that $300 gaming PC the XBox360 simply is the better offering. Sure, I would prefer if it would be an open platform, but there simply isn't a competing alternative that is an open platform in the same price range, so I pick the system that offers the best/most games.
PS: No, I am not a XBox360 owner, horrible hardware reliability still keeps me away, but that aside its the best gaming machine available today.
### Take of those rose-colored glasses when you're looking at the past, and you'll realize that it was exactly the same back then as it is now:
I don't think so. Back then the market and the development studios where much smaller. You had EA back then, but they where nothing like the big ugly beast they have become today. You simply didn't have those huge all-dominating companies, instead a whole bunch of smaller ones. Thanks to the smaller budget experimentation was much more doable then today. That of course doesn't mean that everything back then was great, but it definitvly was quite a bit different then today.
I would say back then a lot of video games where inspired by real-life, books or movies, since there really wasn't much video game history to look at, today on the other side video games are for most part inspired by video games and everything ends up looking quite a lot a like for that very reason.
The golden age for me would be 1990-1995, 2002-2007 just doesn't hold up to all the interesting stuff that happened back then.
### It's a failed analogy.
Nope, its not even an analogy, its a simple fact. The difference between realworld and digital world is that copying is free in the digital one. You don't rape a child by doing "cp porn.jpg new_porn.jpg".
### You're right. One is fun and the other is over priced.
True, but which is which is in the eye of the beholder.
Mass appeal
There are certainly games with better storylines, better gameplay, better graphics, better sounds, more repeatability and more uniqueness around then OOT, even all factors combined. Thing however is, if you have a great story, it might get to complicated for kids to understand it and thus enjoy it, "kill Ganon" on the other side is simple enough for everybody and still provides a little bit of depth to not look completly stupid. Same with gameplay, more options, more freedom and such, might make a more interesting game, but will also stop some people from playing the game, since it gets to complicated. And so it goes on and on.
Zelda:OoT manages to successfully balance out most of these factors to create a game with mass appeal.
First of all, we *already* use email to authenticate on basically everything on the web. If you forgot your password, the server will send you a new one via unencrypted mail. The only exceptions are high security things like banking, where things will get send by snail mail instead of email. Secondly, forging emails is a non-issue. You click 'login', server sends you an auth-token, you login with that. If somebody forgets that server mail, he doesn't gain any access at all. If he intercepts that mail then that indeed might be a problem, but you could lock-down the auth token to a specific IP address, making it worthless for him or go all the way and send PGP mail. There is never any mail send from the user to the server.
As mentioned this scheme isn't anything new, its simply what we already doing, just that instead of only sending mail when somebody forgot his password, you would send mail on every login, thus no password at all, just secure time and IP locked auth tokens.
This really sounds like a rather useless toy solution, since its easily cracked by brute force or if they make it secure enough to not be crackable, it would be a hell of a lot more uncomfortable then a real password.
Anyway, I think the real solution is much easier and already half the way implemented: Email!
On almost each and every side where you login with a password, you have to register your email address. If you lose your password, you let yourself send a new one via email. So in reality there is only one password for everything and that is the one that protects your email account, all the other passwords are really just placeholder that can be changed and recovered at will once you have access to the email account. So why not automate that process? The server where you request a login, sends some magic-string to your email account and you then use that magic-string to authenticate to your server account. If normal email doesn't feel secure enough, use GPG and friends. While this might be not so perfect with a normal mail client, the whole process could be fully automated, all the magic-strings that you get by mail could automatically be fetched and then used by your webbrowser, so that you would just have to click 'login' on a webpage instead of typing a password. Your email hoster would become an authentication server.
The only downside I see is that you might not want to use your email account on an untrustworthy client, while some blogs comment system password would be invaluable enough to use it there, but that should be solvable by either using secondary less important email addresses then your primary one or by allowing restricted access to your email account via an alternative password.
### If we assume that Einstein was right, and faster than light speed travel is not possible, then isn't manned space flight pretty much impossible?
Nope, with todays tech (Nuclear Fission Propulsion) we could already reach the next star in just 50 years. Thats not fast enough to do the trip on a weekend, but its already good enough for manned spaceflight. FTL travel would certainly be nice to have, but its not needed for space flight to other planets, it would just speed them up a bit.
### which cost under US$2000 three years ago. New games are stressing the system, so I'll have to upgrade to a faster CPU and graphics card (another $600) this year.
A game console costs between $200 - $600 and lasts you for five years or more. There are certainly more expensive hobbies then PC gaming, but then there are also much cheaper solution to play a game.
### Even if 10% of all Xboxes Microsoft ships are faulty (which they aren't)
What makes you think so? Given all the anecdotal stories about broken XBox360s, friends with broken ones and friends of friends with broken ones and very few stories of people actually being happy with their one and never heard about a fault, I would bet that the failure rate is at least that high if not higher.
One issue that might screw the numbers up however are the refurbished units, assuming that the repairs actually didn't fix the core of the problem, many of those failing XBoxes might be the same units, they just fail over and over again by different customers after being refurbished and send back.
Anyway, no matter if this story is true or not, there is no denying that XBox360 failure rate is way higher then it should be and unless Microsoft starts to talk a little truth in that aspect I am not going to buy one anytime soon, even so I would like to.
### Psygnosis contacted him and asked him to take off his game from the web.
"Copycat Lemmings" as it was called I think was a direct rip-off, it even copied a few of the graphics from what I know. So it wasn't just a Lemmings clone, it was copyright violation, trademark violation and all that stuff.
### no more lemmings games have been produced
There has been a very steady stream of Lemmings games over the years (Lemmings2, Lemmings3, 3D Lemmings, Lemmings Paintball, Lomax, LemmingsRevolution) and just recently Lemmings1 got a remake for PS2, PS3 and PSP, there also where numerous ports spread across all kinds of platforms over the years.
Beside, there are a ton of Lemmings clones on the net that never got touched by Psygnosis as well has a few commercial Lemmings-like games that didn't get touched either (Troddlers). So its not like they are going against any recycling of their gameplay elements.
### They're not charging to cover the service, they're charging to keep the quality of the service up.
Thing is they are charging quite a bit, $50 might not sound much, but assuming the Xbox360 has a life of 5 years that makes your $400 XBox360 suddenly cost $650, makes the PS3 look not so expensive any more.
True, but they don't do any clear separation between Tier1 and Tier2 in their requirements, which might simply mean that if you don't meet those requirements you will become Tier2 instead of left out. But we have to wait and see for further news to get the details, at least now there is some hope for indie development, which there wasn't before.
The german USK costs around 250-1500 , depending on the length and complexity of the title. The BPjM will ban your game for free. No idea about BBFC, PEGI and whatever other rating organizations might be around there if you want to publish a title outside of the USA.
Have a look at the page again, it got updated:
This whole Tier 1 and Tier 2 thingy is new and it looks like to open the door for independent developers, you still have to sell a piece of your soul, but they no longer require you to already be a developer to get started, so the chicken&egg thing is solved.
### Name one - just one - created for the unrestricted PC market.
Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Director's Cut available via online distribution in the US, rated AO.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, even so removed from the shelves and rereleased later with M rating.
The issue with AO is that you can't sell it, its nice that you are allowed to sell it on PC in the first place as opposed to consoles, but you still won't get into the shelfs at the big retailers, which means you can basically forget to sell any decent amount of it. Which means publishers won't even touch anything that gets close to AO, you simply can't make money with it. Not because nobody wants it, but because the restrictions make it impossible to sell and thanks to the restrictions developers will of course stay away from doing anything AO as well.
The real issue in the end isn't even that AO basically means things are banned, the issue is that you get AO for pretty harmless stuff, i.e. if a game involves sex and shows it on screen then its instant AO, if a movie does the same on the other side its R, not NC-17. And just for comparison, most of those stuff that gets AO in the USA, gets an 'age 16' rating over here in Germany instead of 'age 18' or being banned.