I had a good income but worked nights so needed something to do during the day and the internet (being dutch I payed by the minute, peak times) was to expensive.
So I played a lot of games, wich I bought. Still got a huge stack of CD's. The floppys were thrown out a few years ago as I figured if I ever wanted to replay one of them I would just download them.
Recently I haven't bought a lot of games. Why? Well I was starting to feel screwed. Hard. In the ass. By a big black guy.
While I am from amsterdam I still did not enjoy that feeling.
What was giving me that feeling? An increasing number of games that were to short, to buggy, to kiddy and just not worth the high price charged.
Lucasarts is for me the perfect example. Their early games were all near perfect. I had little doubt about buying x-wing and its expansions and sequels. Their adventures? Who needs a review when it got the lucasarts label?
Then came games like that horrible Monkey island with the moronic 3d interface that was a bitch to control. Yuck. Fun but ruined by some kind of need to use 3d in the marketing bullshit.
Worse was still to come. Forgot the title that was the galactic bit version of the current Empire at war release. Or howabout that RTS eh? The first one that was not based on the age of empire engine?
Crap games, that were buggy and just not fun to play and certainly not worth full price.
Even the x-wing series went downhill as it became less and less dogfighting and more and more missle dodging.
I feel less and less inclined to buy the new releases as I know that what awaits me is a poorlyb designed game riddled with bugs.
FEAR was great but is a 8 hour game really worth full price? Not in my book.
But there was anoter problem as well. That is copy protection. Why is it that the PAYING public has to mess around with game-cd's, impossible to read keys, non-working drives etc etc when the pirate can just download a far better game that just runs, with the update and isn't slown down by constant CD accessing?
An old sequel to elite, frontier something, took the absolute price in stupid copy protection. It stopped every 20 minutes or so to ask you to look up a word in the manual. Gee thanks, for that lovely experience. It was still BBS for me in those days but finally a friend gave me a cracked version of the game that skipped that stupid check. My first pirated game. Going from constant interruption to trouble free gaming by NOT paying 79,- guilders.
Current game protections would be like having a DVD that forces you to watch a 10 second segment warning you not to pirate the movie that ofcourse no ripper includes so only the persons who do not pirate see it. You would have to be completly insane to do that to your paying customers.
I still got money to spend, just that if I go to a game store today I just don't see that many games worthy of my money. The few that I still buy seem to insist on rewarding me for buying them by giving me a harder time then the people who pirate it.
Oh, and none of the copy protections work anyway. Empire at war has starforce and all you had to do for hassle free, free play was to wait till a proper group got around to crack it.
The game is indeed a current lucasarts game. CRAP. Worth about 3 euro in the store. Not 49.95
A better question would be, will Tetris still be played in 500 years. Only teenage boys would call GTA the "scottisch play" of computer games.
A lot of the early movies are almost unwatchable nowadays. While Laurel and Hardy have aged well a lot of earlier movies just don't work anymore with todays audiences and are rotting away in archives.
As for shakespeare himself, I doubt he was the only playwright of his age. So where are the works of all those others? Justly or unjustly forgotten?
As with any art form games will have a lot of crud that may excite people at the time but is ultimatly forgotten in the long run. This is nothing new. People have produced art for thousands of years yet only a tiny part of it is known let alone still enjoyed. Why should games be any different?
If you want to judge games by their longivety then take games that have been with us for a couple of decades. Games like pong. Oh, but modern versions of pong are not exact copies of the original? Well neither are most productions of shakespear exact copies of the original. Most wouldn't be able to understand it.
Frankly I don't know if pong or tetris like games will still be played in 500 years time. Games are an active form of art, not passive. They have the element of technology that forces them to change. We don't still play the same game of tennis or soccor or golf as it was played 100 years ago.
Then again, how many of you seen shakespeare in the theater by candlelight vs in the movie theather? Just because the GTA in 500 years will be on a holodeck does that not make it the same piece of art? Same as shakespeare on the silverscreen is the same art as on stage?
Then again who cares it is art, art sits unloved in museums. Does the game industry really want that to happen?
A rail network isn't cheap and it doesn't make money. It is part of the infrastructure however that countries need to others can use them to make money.
Lets just take a small rail network like the london underground. It is hideously expensive to build and maintain. There are only two ways to operate it.
See it as a commercial company. Nice idea but doesn't work. Why? Because commercial companies A got to earn their costs, their future investments and a bit extra. But how can you do this when you run a company that has to maintain loss making lines?
What?
Well it is simple, it is very easy to make money on the mainlines during peak times. Then the trains are packed and you can easily get your money even with reasonable ticket prices. But how many people would use those mainlines at peak times if there werent any feeder lines at non-peak times?
Simply put, to get on the mainline I need to take a bus from my house that is half empty. No way that bus makes a profit BUT if it wasn't running I would have no use for the mainline.
Think of it like this, a supermarket that only sells butter and cheese and jam and peanut butter but NOT bread wouldn't be much use now would it?
A rail network, or public transport in general will always be spending the money it makes on those non-profit lines. The moment you try to cut money by getting rid of unprofitable lines you gut the service meaning fewer people can use it.
This practice of cutting unprofitable lines and thereby cutting off whole parts of the country from public transport started long ago. The more it happens the less people can rely on public transport, the less they will use it, the more unprofitable lines you will have, and so on.
Only in those countries where public transport is seen as an vital part of the infrastructure still have a working system. Spending billions on keeping it all running year in and year out however is very difficult and it is very tempting for a goverment to just cut the budget for a term and hope it will all keep to gether and next term there will be money for the back maintenance. Off course that never happens and so the system is neglected for decades until people die.
Nothing new, the dutch railnetwork is going through similar problems, our politicians asure us that the we won't have the same problems as the brits and the fact that recently we have had a whole series of accidents is just coincendence.
Who is to blaim? People that believe in tax cuts. A goverment tax cut is like your landlord saying he will charge you 100 less. Just now you got to pay the elec bill of 200 yourselve. I never seen a tax cut that wasn't offset by an increase somewhere else.
Very odd nation but europe is its biggest problem. The 'good' turkey is in fact a military dictatorship. Oh sure it is a democracy on the surface but only because the military says so. It is the army that enforces Turkeys rigid seperation of church and state and anyone who tries to change this is stomped on. And soldiers stomp hard.
So what does the west want? For the army to play a lesser role in politics. Great idea because if democracy were fully allowed it seems very likely Turkey would become another muslims country like Iran (not what the west wants).
Oh and don't forget the Koerds. Yeah I know the bleeding hearts have neatly forgotten how the Koerds now have peace and freedom that they did not have under Saddam but the Koerds still are a supressed minority in Turkey.
So, threat of seperatist and pressure from the west to abolish the system that makes it a very western country. I would call those very big problems.
But yes, your right that the west is measuring with two standards here as well. Why should the koerds have their own land when the Basks do not and Northern Ireland is still occupied?
Odd, shows how little I know about the world
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1001 Islamic Inventions
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Because I could have sworn that Islam isn't thousands of years old.
While it is difficult to spot exactly where the islamic fate starts in history most people seem to assume it starts with the prophet Muhammad.
Who came a good 700 years after Jesus Christ who himself came from a fate even older. If you go back several thousand years the only bible fate around that is still around (as far as I know) are the Jews.
Wich means that most of the inventions claimed here are in fact not made by muslims but either by their predecessors (christians or jews) OR one of the many other fates that used to exist in the world.
It always suprises me when people talk about the rich history of the middle east and attribute it to Islam when in fact islam had next to nothing to do with it. Just check islamic attitudes to the great pyramids.
When an article already makes a basic mistake by attributing achievements to a fate that happened hundreds of years earlier I smell propoganda. Would be like attributing the Great Wall to the Chinese Communist Party.
Same region, same ethnic people but totally different nonetheless.
Basically this whole things sound to me like, thousands of years ago when the world was totally different some guy invented a thing wich was kinda of usefull so now a whole group of religious freaks must be liked despite the fact that everything they say and do is exactly against the believes of that guy thousands of years ago.
No thanks. I just judge muslims by the ones I meet in daily life.
My greatest problem with the muslims in general is that they never seem to have heard of the saying "what is good for the goose is good for the gander" (what goes for you goes for me). Take the recent riots over those danish cartoons. Arab media have spouted hate for decades but that is alright. One rule for the muslims, another for the rest of the world. No thank you.
The only thing I know that in holland a mere 3-4% of the population seems to be in the news 80% of the time. You can turn on the tv without some program about them. Enough already.
Oh, and those who think that hatred against muslims is extreme right. Consider this. What do nazi's hate? Homosexuals, equal rights for women, jews, etc. What do muslims hate?
Those lefties defending muslims bashing gays and supressing womens mystify me. Sometimes the enemy of your enemy is your enemy as well. Just because your against Bush doesn't mean you have to be pro muslim.
While firefox does supports mouse gestures you can feel it is tagged on and not part of it is design. They often don't take, especially small gestures.
Same with tabbed browsing. Firefox to often still pops up a window when I don't want one because at its core it is still a window based browser where opera is deep down a tabbed browser.
Yes I like some of the extensions in Firefox but for day to day browsing Opera is just that little bit easier to control, a tad faster and less of a hog.
It ain't perfect but it is getting there.
Oh and to get the MS bashing in. When will IE pass the acid test?
Why do game makers put stuff in that appeals to some guys that offends some women? Because that is their market stupid.
DOA Beachball or whatever it is called is aimed at the guys. There are 3 billion of them and while not all guys like DOA beachball even if a mere 10 percent likes the idea that is still a shitload of games.
To these women who wonder why some games are not aimed at them I ask them this. Why were there no carchases in Titanic? No sword fights, no half naked ninja killers asian teenage girls? We guys NEED THAT. The crappy soppy romance crap without any of the hardhitting political criteque that was in the original offends US!
There a guy games and their are girls games and their are gender neutral games. Just as for every other piece of entertainment. Soppy mindless romance drivel movies for the girls, crappy senseless violence for the boys. Or not.
Why do all games have to appeal to all people? Frankly the women becrying the guy games seem to want to turn all men into women. Not going to happen ladies. Especially not since those same women will be raising the next generations of crotch scratchers.
Don't blame game designed for guys that they don't appeal to girls unless your 100% sure games designed for girls appeal to guys.
I hate to see a game that appeals to everyone. Disney tries that. Ewh.
At least all the ones I know. Anyway, I worked in retail and it is standard practice. It is just so much easier to fod people off over the phone. Far harder to do it in store.
Sure I would love to find a great store that just does the business. I had one where I grow up but travelling halfway across holland (american distance, other side of town) is a bit to much.
My current store is okay, you just got to get the right guy and he doesn't do phone support. The monkeys do. You need the manager or techies and they only serve at the counter.
Who says that when XMMS crashes it is XMMS'es fault?
It could be one of its library's. XMMS source code doesn't give you the player (or at least not one that will do anything) if you used gentoo or LFS you would know this.
Oh and bugs != programming errors or design flaws. Even if you elimenate all the bugs you could still have a program that blows up your cat when you try to save a file. It will just do it without any bugs getting in the way. Wich is a good thing. Unless your the cat.
While other sports simulation video games - like football, baseball and auto racing - let you live vicarious dreams of doing things you likely can't do in real life, it's not real hard to find a Ping Pong table.
Ehm, baseballs and footballs are hard to find? If football is indeed the american soccer I am willing to bet a shit load of cash that more families own a football then a ping pong table. You need a bit more equipment for baseball but still. I wasn't exactly aware that amateurs playing baseball was rare.
It is, in fact, one of the very few "indoor" sports that has a video game patterned after it. (Poker's about the only other one that springs to mind.)
Well, if you consider poker a sport then how about the video game versions of the following. Chess, EVERY bloody card game every invented, checkers, darts, bowling, snooker, etc etc etc.
In fact isn't basketball often played indoors by pros AND done to dead as a videogame?
The only unusual thing here is that a 'big' name company did a weird sports title. Weird sports titles on the other hand are nothing new.
I just hate journalists who think ignorance is a good thing.
It was open. Perhaps I should first tell you about a game that isn't open. Everquest 2. In EQ2 you pick a race. Then you choose your alignment. Except that most races are limited to either being good or evil. (Note that you CHOOSE your alignment, not get to be evil based on your choices in the game).
Then in game you select your base class. Fighter, priest, wizard, scout. THAT is your last real choice. Oh wait, but at level 10 you get to choose a specialisation. Well yeah. They slightly refine you base class. Some are different. For instance a brawler is a very different type of fighter then the others BUT the difference between the wizards ain't really all that big.
Then at level 20 you are supposed to get you final class. Except it is prediced. The only difference that the titel is now based on your alignment. Monk (good) Brawler (bad) unarmed fighter.
So how closed is this? Well, at no point do you choose say something like your stat points. Meaning every half-elf brawler level 18 is EXACTLY the same. Because of the way equipment works you will probably also be using pretty much the stuff.
Now they added some minor choices that make you character slightly unique but in EQ2 you pretty much now exactly what a well played shaman is and isn't capable off. Player X will have the same spell list as player Y.
SWG on the other hand left it totally open how you developed your skills. In fact with a new character most players would dabble in ALL the disciplines, being a medic, ranger and melee combat, a dancer and a crafter with a bit of scout for good measure.
Depending on your style and if you weren't a template stacker you could have some unusual mixed. A medic with a sniper rifle , a doctor jedi. Whatever!
To an extent, it allowed a great deal of freedom. Crafters with a sideline in rifles so they could safely clear their harvesters of nasty critters. Dancers with a sideline in cutting peoples heads off.
In SWG you never knew exactly what the other guy was capable off.
I played SWG for over a year. I joined late because I didn't know that Sony is the only MMO company that does not think Credit Cards are the only form of payment in the world. For wich they deserve credit. Not many international companies realize this. Even paypal requires a credit card, HELLO, if I have a credit card I wouldn't use paypal would I?
Anyway, you make a rather stupid mistake, you think that the people who decry sony are the same who defend blizzard. No way.
Blizzard if anything is a far worse company. It especially screws european players. No beta, No trial, No alternative payment options, Limited to european servers.
But they got one thing right, they 'finished' the game and so far seem to have refrained from just altering the game play completly and telling you to suck it up and like it.
Sony's faults with SWG are simple. They never really decided WHAT the game was going to be like, they didn't debug it, bugs stayed with the game for far to long, even simple bugs that could have been fixed in a second. There customer support is a joke (at least with WoW people get feedback about the que. SWG servers just are down with no message. EQ2 servers are always reported as up even if no one can log in.
The bugs could have been easily fixed? Well yeah, one bug that was in the game for years was as follows. Vehicles took damage as you used them, insanely fast, and the cost for repairing them was an important money drain. Okay so far if crap design (shouts out, your playing a game) but the bug was that after you repaired your vehice and stored it when you recalled it was as damaged as before. Not only wasting your repair costs but also forcing you just to buy new vehicles if the repair didn't stick before the vehicle was destroyed.
How could it have been fixed? Simple. TURN OF DAMAGE! But the money drain? Even simpler. Road tax. Simple tax every player for the vehicles he has. Realistic, your landspeeder doesn't fall apart after one journey and you can even make planets more expensive by having them charge a higher tax.
That SOE couldn't wouldn't fix this tells you all you need to know about them.
People who played the game still care about it. It took up a large amount of time and in some way I know the planets better then the town I live in. It was our hobby and SOE butchered it.
And that right there is SOE's problem
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Future Plans for SWG?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
You liked the CU, I hated it and quit because of it. So even if they do a rollback, then a rollback to when? I think the rot started to really rot when they removed the hologrind.
Why? Well at least with the holo grind people were doing different things while grinding. The holo monkeys gave the rest of the galaxy a constant supply of fresh meat. People needing newbie weapons, needing groups to survive doing from melee to ranged.
Or did the rot set in earlier when they added the doc buffs that allowed the solo group to become the only way to play?
If SOE is going to continue, they just need to start over. Ditch this, and just start over with a new design and really choose what kind of MMO they want it to be.
The original SWG was perhaps the oddest of all MMORPG's as in that it didn't have 'levels'. You had a max number of skill points but how you spend those was up to you. It was when players started to optomize them and become super leet fighters and demanding equipment and enemies to satisfy them that the game went to hell.
At the moment the entire CU and NGE mess is caused in no small degree by the fact that the engine just isn't designed for it. It now reminds me of those quake mods that turned a fps into a flightsim or driving game. Fun for a second but they just ain't up to the task.
Don't bother trying to control the journalists, control the presses. Or the broadcasting stations. Or the theathers.
Why do you think people with a clue are so against the super big media cooperations owning ALL the media? So what if your an independent reporter trying to get the truth out. No need to kill him off, just make sure nobody distributes his story.
The internet was the great revolution in that respect. Virtually anyone can get his/her story out with the big media having no control over it. Trust corrupt/insane goverments to try to ruin it. Oh and trust us to vote them into power time and time again.
You don't sound like one to me, you sound like an ex-pat who can't wait to get back to civilization.
While I don't doubt there are a lot of you world wide it is not a market a vodaphone could give a shit about.
Everything you say is confirming that the Japanese do not have the same tastes as westerners. You are a perfect vodaphone customer, the japanese are not.
Vodafone forgot to adapt and are now bowing out to save further problems while they can still recoop their money. It is nothing new. Other western attempts in forms of partnerships have also failed. Japan != the west and the west != Japan. Just look at the success by KPN (dutch telecom who partned with docomo(?)) in bringing iMode to Holland.
It ain't exactly running wild because they totally screwed it up. The west is used to the freedom of the real internet so KNP answered by giving it the limited iMode and then barely filling it with anything worthwhile. People try it, find nothing they like/want/need and then never use it again.
Doing business internationally is very hard. Frankly I am not suprised that western telecoms have a hard time in japan. Japan seems to be a bit of a go getter in mobile communications while the european telecoms tend to be dinosaurs who think a 10 year planning phase is moving dangerously fast.
Keeping the prices high? Are you kidding? If you think 0.99 per song is high you ain't seen nothing yet baby. As soon as we can get people to stop using iTunes and a MS based system instead with no Steve Jobs to protect consumers, and his bottomline, we will really be ramping up the price!
But they make good headlines and that is reporting is all about these days.
You can't buy opensource. Once it is out there, it is out there. If it is true opensource the code doesn't even belong to a single entity that can be bought. If you contribute some code no matter how small to a opensource project even though you do it under the GPL it still belongs to you. In fact that is what the GPL is pretty much about. You just give everyone else the right to use it (within certain limits) as they wish.
Yes you can hire the developers away from a project in the hope of killing it but why would this be a worry to opensource alone? EVERY project, commercial, political, social can be killed by its enemies by luring the people involved away. It can be very upsetting, just ask Ballmer.
It is nothing new. In fact several opensource people even started working for the beast. The gentoo guy for one. Except he left again pretty quickly.
And that I think is the reason opensource in fact has less to worry about then commercial projects about being bled of its developers. It is a huge difference to work on your own time for a volunteer project and to have to work for your salery on markettings whims.
Most of the bigger opensource projects are done for free by people who wouldn't have any trouble at all doing the same thing for money. In fact most do. There is one thing business week doesn't get about developers. They love it!
A developer will happily work all week coding to support himself to code in weekend as well. People like that can be tempted with money but not for long. When someone is willing to work for free they obviously think that a salery is only there to pay the bills.
But of course, it makes a nice headline because a handfull of companies with opensource projects are being attempted to be bought up (mysql refused didn't it?). Opensource is about as death as socialism. Just check you paycheck how much of your salery goes to social security.
It means they bought a Dell, expected it to either to just work or be fixed by Dell, were disappointed and were then forced to go to a local shop to get the support they thought they would get from Dell.
But since this is nothing new and Dell continues to sell it also means that either this does't happen to a lot of people or people just don't learn.
I buy from local shops and NEVER call in with a problem. I put the defective product on the counter on a shopping day (thursday evening or a saturday) and speak loudly about how I want it repaired or replaced. Works wonders. Over a phone they can and will try to tell you that a brand new HD is supposes to show badblocks or that a single wrong pixel in a lcd is acceptable. It is offcourse. If your stupid.
I remember similar stories about many a game where the AI was supposed to be something hot. It never seems to pan out. Either they are lying, or it was a fluke, or they somehow never bother to actually put it in the game because the CIA has confiscated the code.
I don't know but so far AI seems to be 'okay' at dodging in a well designed enviroment but coming close to intelligence?
Silent Storm has the AI picking up dropped weapons. Great, so your civilian decides to be a hero, runs out to some dropped weapon, picks a lot of crap up and then gets killed before his next turn.
There are other games too where giving the AI freedom just never pans out. The only game where I seen some 'real' AI behaviour that seemed human was in the original Alien vs Predator. I was an alien hanging from the ceiling and two AI are in a hallway further along, one of them panicks and fires in my general direction and misses killing the other and he panics before being killed by the backblast.
That was not intelligent but it was human like (he missed because the angle was wrong not because he stupidly shot his buddy or the scenery). But then I realised that it wasn't very good AI at all.
The AI enemies would routinely throw explosives at me with no hope of reaching me that would then come back down and kill their own troops. Basically what seemed human ai was just bad projectile path prediction (or as Silent Storm players call it, don't fire your machine gun through your own squad you idiot AI).
I would love to see some decent AI, I really would and maybe this game has it (doubt it since Morrowind didn't have ANY) but some developers wild story doesn't make me hopefull. I could tell you plenty of wild AI stories in game sessions that in the end were just lucky coincedence. Yeah they are great when they happen to you but they are not AI anymore then when the ghosts in pacman happen to completly surround you just as the pill runs out is real AI. Just random luck.
Look, there is a very simple problem here. Not all RPG's are the same. You got the japanese best known through Final Fantasy and you got the westerns RPG recently best known by Baldur Gate.
They are totally different beasts. If you like one then you will probably hate the other. To me for instance Final Fantasy isn't even an RPG. Its an adventure on rails with piss poor graphics and lousy combat and ZERO freedom.
On the other hand if you loved it then Morrowind will definitly not be your cup of tea. FF very strong story line with NO choice wich allows for your character to have a very real personilty and interact with his surroundings.
Morrowind, you are pretty much a faceless hero, if your lucky the AI will be intelligent enough to react differently depending on your sex but expecting it to react based on your sex, and skin color and species and combat choice is to much for current tech. Then again, morrowing allows you to play YOUR character and not the character the FF designer decided.
As for the loading times, well it all depends, on a good PC it sufffered because it was crippled (was fixed later with the PC only expansions) to be able to run on a x-box and therefor did not make full use of your memory. But again comparing this to FF7 is insane. Maybe your monitor sucked or you played the games on a console but on the PC the graphics difference between FF7 and Morrowind is several lightyears.
Anyway, for anyone still reading, ALL the Elder Scroll games are open ended, be your own character style games. If you expect Japanese style on rail gameplay look elsewhere. Elder Scrolls makes Baldur Gates look restrictive.
Sadly reviewers have to put games in one of a handfull of categories and that makes it very confusing for people who think all RPG's should be alike.
I am not suprised you didn't like morrowind, what is sad that you didn't learn it would not be to your taste before you bought it. Game reviews suck for this reason alone. Stop trying to sell every game to everybody. Make it clear what a game is going to be like.
This gamespot 'preview' again seems to be selling the game as having action and plot and it won't. You will once again be allowed to get totally lost and have to deal witht the fact you can wander into the wrong areas way to early because that is the kind of game Bethseda makes. Some of use love it, but make it clear to the Final Fantasy lovers that they should stay clear. Or at least be prepared for something completly different.
Yah, if there is one thing more annyoung then iPod killer stories it is generic company killer stories.
If you think Sony is having troubles take a look at Philips. They been struggling for the last 2 decades and they are still around.
Big companies don't die easily and they don't get much bigger then Sony. Even now.
Oh sure, Sony can really get into trouble but it is to big to just collapse unless a scandal happens like Enron. For one thing there is employment. Sony has factories everywhere and goverments are very reluctant to just let them close. So for at least a few years ways will be found to keep them open. It happened with companies that were in far worse trouble then Sony is.
Frankly most of this talk is rather silly. There is the ever present fantasy of seeing the giant cut down to size. Very human but just not likely. There is even a post in this news story that Sony should really worry about MS x-box. The eternal fantasy that the giant Playstation will be brought down by the humble MS (irony or what) in the form of the x-box. Because the x-box 360 has all these features. That the original x-box also had and that didn't work but that is just details. It is the upstart vs the giant and the giant must loose or how can the world survive.
Then there is the idea that Apple can compete with Sony in the living room. Because Apple has an mp3 player while Sony only has every other device you can have in your house. Apple to provide a DVR. Nice, and what will you watch it on?
A problem I can't judge for its realness is wether Sony Hardware is really being cripled by Sony Media. Yes there are suggestions that Philips (who sold its media division) is far more ready to provide consumers with electronics that can be used to excersise their rights to make personal copies while Sony devices seem to take DRM to the next level. But is this really because of the media division or is it just someone in hardware who doesn't have a clue.
Oh and lets not forget that the other 'players' MS and Apple are both very happy DRM sellers as well. Hell Steve Jobs has disney so he should be feeling the same pressure from his media half as sony feels from its.
Remember Sony once fought in court for the right to copy. Disney has always been anti-consumer rights.
Now if there is a problem with Sony I think it is far simpler. They seem to be dropping in quality. Sony just to be just good for not an insane amount of money. They weren't the best and they weren't cheap but if you bought something off them you could be reasonably sure that it would last for a while. My minidisc player lasted me for four years. All my old Sony stuff lasted a long time under heavy abuse while cheaper brands would break in under a year.
If you could afford Sony it was an okay deal and that is actually worth a lot in real life.
Just recently my only Sony products are the PSP with its famous dead pixels and the Sony earbuds. Now they used to be very expensive (50 euros) but they fit perfectly in my ear and allow me to keep the sound level down by reducing outside noise. They lasted about a year of daily use before falling apart.
Recently something seems to have gone wrong with the plastic around the wires. It melts or something becoming almost chewing gum like and falls off the wires. Just after a month 2-3. Once I thought it was my fault, but when it happened a second time with a new set for no reason (not left out in heat or something) I am starting to think something is wrong the material itself.
If Sony has lost or is going to lose its image for decent quality for a decent price then it is in serious shit. As long as it could sell me earbuds for 50 euros when everyone else manages to sell them for half then it is doing fine and can afford a few 'flops'. Personally I am now looking to buy some 'pro' earbuds with real earplugs. More expensive but hopefully they give better sound isolation and last longer.
The upcoming PS3 (whenever it may actually launch) will I think be an imp
That took longer then I thought
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AMD Subpoenas Skype
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Gee, artificially limiting your product to work best with a company under constant scrutiny for being an unfair monopoly. Doesn't skype have any lawyers?
Then again it says a lot about skype that they even put in a hard limit in their software. Since hardware is improving all the time this will make your software quickly fall behind. It is like those software installers that check the platform string and refuse to install if it doesn't match their list. So you have to hack the game to work install on w2k3 (MS greatest gaming platform ever, would want it in a server room but runs games perfectly).
Even if intel launches some 6hgz chip skype would still be limited to 10 callers. Even if you run it on a super computer, skype would still be limited by 10 callers.
Oh well, pretty much everyone here on slashdot predicted this would end up in court.
Limiting your online product to a segment of the market. Oh yeah, the bubble is back with a vengenance. Does their website insist you run IE as well?
Yeah, nice for the 'hero' sucks for everyone else
on
World of Queuecraft
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· Score: 1
That is why I said you can't be the hero. Because if one person is,then everyone else isn't. Since everyone pays the same online fee why should one person be allowed to do more?
It is a bit like a schoolplay where the script comes with extra scenes and characters to fit the class size just so that every kid can have a part and not feel left out.
This one hero who can change the world idea of WoW is going to go as well as me playing quake in the ISP's server room. God the abuse I got just for having a ping less then zero. Same for the poor sap who is the one who rings the bell while everyone is still waiting in a que.
It works for single player games but not in the massive games. People ain't that nice that they feel happy someone else got to do the cool bit.
Well the original one. On the PC. The only 'platformer' in fact I ever liked, the one with the save anywhere system so you could take Lara for a stroll and then quit when real life reared its ugly head.
More or less the game was just fun to play. The sequel was sorta fun as well except it somehow never had the magic moments of the first and was a lot harder. Then came the console save points. Remember game designers, save points are a hardware limitation, NOT good game design.
ME the PAYING customer want to play your game in the way I the PAYING customer wants to play it. That includes sessions of a few minutes between other activities. NOT having to play for as long as some level designer decided I need to play to get between save points.
The game lost the magic, became too hard while not keeping up with PC developments. Somebody needs to shoot the people that worked on the sequels and get the original magic back. A simple fun platform game where you usually just make the jump, the run, the leap with some impressive architecture to stare at. I am talkling about the SCENERY! You pervert. Geez.
As for Lara getting more 'realistic'. WHAT THE FUCK!
So what is some people with to much estrogen complain. Sell the game to the real men that want their women to have impossible looks. They are impossible to live with anyway, they might as well look it too. I just remember Planescape torment, now that was a game with big boobies.
Slashdot Mirror
The extremely tame clip would barely register here. Not when a program during the daytime aimed squarely at kids has full frontal nudity in it.
But don't worry, with dutch parties like CDA (Christian Dicks & Assholdes) we will soon have the same puritan system as the good old US of A.
What happened to the idea of free speech anyway?
So I played a lot of games, wich I bought. Still got a huge stack of CD's. The floppys were thrown out a few years ago as I figured if I ever wanted to replay one of them I would just download them.
Recently I haven't bought a lot of games. Why? Well I was starting to feel screwed. Hard. In the ass. By a big black guy.
While I am from amsterdam I still did not enjoy that feeling.
What was giving me that feeling? An increasing number of games that were to short, to buggy, to kiddy and just not worth the high price charged.
Lucasarts is for me the perfect example. Their early games were all near perfect. I had little doubt about buying x-wing and its expansions and sequels. Their adventures? Who needs a review when it got the lucasarts label?
Then came games like that horrible Monkey island with the moronic 3d interface that was a bitch to control. Yuck. Fun but ruined by some kind of need to use 3d in the marketing bullshit.
Worse was still to come. Forgot the title that was the galactic bit version of the current Empire at war release. Or howabout that RTS eh? The first one that was not based on the age of empire engine?
Crap games, that were buggy and just not fun to play and certainly not worth full price.
Even the x-wing series went downhill as it became less and less dogfighting and more and more missle dodging.
I feel less and less inclined to buy the new releases as I know that what awaits me is a poorlyb designed game riddled with bugs.
FEAR was great but is a 8 hour game really worth full price? Not in my book.
But there was anoter problem as well. That is copy protection. Why is it that the PAYING public has to mess around with game-cd's, impossible to read keys, non-working drives etc etc when the pirate can just download a far better game that just runs, with the update and isn't slown down by constant CD accessing?
An old sequel to elite, frontier something, took the absolute price in stupid copy protection. It stopped every 20 minutes or so to ask you to look up a word in the manual. Gee thanks, for that lovely experience. It was still BBS for me in those days but finally a friend gave me a cracked version of the game that skipped that stupid check. My first pirated game. Going from constant interruption to trouble free gaming by NOT paying 79,- guilders.
Current game protections would be like having a DVD that forces you to watch a 10 second segment warning you not to pirate the movie that ofcourse no ripper includes so only the persons who do not pirate see it. You would have to be completly insane to do that to your paying customers.
I still got money to spend, just that if I go to a game store today I just don't see that many games worthy of my money. The few that I still buy seem to insist on rewarding me for buying them by giving me a harder time then the people who pirate it.
Oh, and none of the copy protections work anyway. Empire at war has starforce and all you had to do for hassle free, free play was to wait till a proper group got around to crack it.
The game is indeed a current lucasarts game. CRAP. Worth about 3 euro in the store. Not 49.95
A lot of the early movies are almost unwatchable nowadays. While Laurel and Hardy have aged well a lot of earlier movies just don't work anymore with todays audiences and are rotting away in archives.
As for shakespeare himself, I doubt he was the only playwright of his age. So where are the works of all those others? Justly or unjustly forgotten?
As with any art form games will have a lot of crud that may excite people at the time but is ultimatly forgotten in the long run. This is nothing new. People have produced art for thousands of years yet only a tiny part of it is known let alone still enjoyed. Why should games be any different?
If you want to judge games by their longivety then take games that have been with us for a couple of decades. Games like pong. Oh, but modern versions of pong are not exact copies of the original? Well neither are most productions of shakespear exact copies of the original. Most wouldn't be able to understand it.
Frankly I don't know if pong or tetris like games will still be played in 500 years time. Games are an active form of art, not passive. They have the element of technology that forces them to change. We don't still play the same game of tennis or soccor or golf as it was played 100 years ago.
Then again, how many of you seen shakespeare in the theater by candlelight vs in the movie theather? Just because the GTA in 500 years will be on a holodeck does that not make it the same piece of art? Same as shakespeare on the silverscreen is the same art as on stage?
Then again who cares it is art, art sits unloved in museums. Does the game industry really want that to happen?
Lets just take a small rail network like the london underground. It is hideously expensive to build and maintain. There are only two ways to operate it.
See it as a commercial company. Nice idea but doesn't work. Why? Because commercial companies A got to earn their costs, their future investments and a bit extra. But how can you do this when you run a company that has to maintain loss making lines?
What?
Well it is simple, it is very easy to make money on the mainlines during peak times. Then the trains are packed and you can easily get your money even with reasonable ticket prices. But how many people would use those mainlines at peak times if there werent any feeder lines at non-peak times?
Simply put, to get on the mainline I need to take a bus from my house that is half empty. No way that bus makes a profit BUT if it wasn't running I would have no use for the mainline.
Think of it like this, a supermarket that only sells butter and cheese and jam and peanut butter but NOT bread wouldn't be much use now would it?
A rail network, or public transport in general will always be spending the money it makes on those non-profit lines. The moment you try to cut money by getting rid of unprofitable lines you gut the service meaning fewer people can use it.
This practice of cutting unprofitable lines and thereby cutting off whole parts of the country from public transport started long ago. The more it happens the less people can rely on public transport, the less they will use it, the more unprofitable lines you will have, and so on.
Only in those countries where public transport is seen as an vital part of the infrastructure still have a working system. Spending billions on keeping it all running year in and year out however is very difficult and it is very tempting for a goverment to just cut the budget for a term and hope it will all keep to gether and next term there will be money for the back maintenance. Off course that never happens and so the system is neglected for decades until people die.
Nothing new, the dutch railnetwork is going through similar problems, our politicians asure us that the we won't have the same problems as the brits and the fact that recently we have had a whole series of accidents is just coincendence.
Who is to blaim? People that believe in tax cuts. A goverment tax cut is like your landlord saying he will charge you 100 less. Just now you got to pay the elec bill of 200 yourselve. I never seen a tax cut that wasn't offset by an increase somewhere else.
So what does the west want? For the army to play a lesser role in politics. Great idea because if democracy were fully allowed it seems very likely Turkey would become another muslims country like Iran (not what the west wants).
Oh and don't forget the Koerds. Yeah I know the bleeding hearts have neatly forgotten how the Koerds now have peace and freedom that they did not have under Saddam but the Koerds still are a supressed minority in Turkey.
So, threat of seperatist and pressure from the west to abolish the system that makes it a very western country. I would call those very big problems.
But yes, your right that the west is measuring with two standards here as well. Why should the koerds have their own land when the Basks do not and Northern Ireland is still occupied?
While it is difficult to spot exactly where the islamic fate starts in history most people seem to assume it starts with the prophet Muhammad.
Who came a good 700 years after Jesus Christ who himself came from a fate even older. If you go back several thousand years the only bible fate around that is still around (as far as I know) are the Jews.
Wich means that most of the inventions claimed here are in fact not made by muslims but either by their predecessors (christians or jews) OR one of the many other fates that used to exist in the world.
It always suprises me when people talk about the rich history of the middle east and attribute it to Islam when in fact islam had next to nothing to do with it. Just check islamic attitudes to the great pyramids.
When an article already makes a basic mistake by attributing achievements to a fate that happened hundreds of years earlier I smell propoganda. Would be like attributing the Great Wall to the Chinese Communist Party.
Same region, same ethnic people but totally different nonetheless.
Basically this whole things sound to me like, thousands of years ago when the world was totally different some guy invented a thing wich was kinda of usefull so now a whole group of religious freaks must be liked despite the fact that everything they say and do is exactly against the believes of that guy thousands of years ago.
No thanks. I just judge muslims by the ones I meet in daily life.
My greatest problem with the muslims in general is that they never seem to have heard of the saying "what is good for the goose is good for the gander" (what goes for you goes for me). Take the recent riots over those danish cartoons. Arab media have spouted hate for decades but that is alright. One rule for the muslims, another for the rest of the world. No thank you.
The only thing I know that in holland a mere 3-4% of the population seems to be in the news 80% of the time. You can turn on the tv without some program about them. Enough already.
Oh, and those who think that hatred against muslims is extreme right. Consider this. What do nazi's hate? Homosexuals, equal rights for women, jews, etc. What do muslims hate?
Those lefties defending muslims bashing gays and supressing womens mystify me. Sometimes the enemy of your enemy is your enemy as well. Just because your against Bush doesn't mean you have to be pro muslim.
Same with tabbed browsing. Firefox to often still pops up a window when I don't want one because at its core it is still a window based browser where opera is deep down a tabbed browser.
Yes I like some of the extensions in Firefox but for day to day browsing Opera is just that little bit easier to control, a tad faster and less of a hog.
It ain't perfect but it is getting there.
Oh and to get the MS bashing in. When will IE pass the acid test?
DOA Beachball or whatever it is called is aimed at the guys. There are 3 billion of them and while not all guys like DOA beachball even if a mere 10 percent likes the idea that is still a shitload of games.
To these women who wonder why some games are not aimed at them I ask them this. Why were there no carchases in Titanic? No sword fights, no half naked ninja killers asian teenage girls? We guys NEED THAT. The crappy soppy romance crap without any of the hardhitting political criteque that was in the original offends US!
There a guy games and their are girls games and their are gender neutral games. Just as for every other piece of entertainment. Soppy mindless romance drivel movies for the girls, crappy senseless violence for the boys. Or not.
Why do all games have to appeal to all people? Frankly the women becrying the guy games seem to want to turn all men into women. Not going to happen ladies. Especially not since those same women will be raising the next generations of crotch scratchers.
Don't blame game designed for guys that they don't appeal to girls unless your 100% sure games designed for girls appeal to guys.
I hate to see a game that appeals to everyone. Disney tries that. Ewh.
Sure I would love to find a great store that just does the business. I had one where I grow up but travelling halfway across holland (american distance, other side of town) is a bit to much.
My current store is okay, you just got to get the right guy and he doesn't do phone support. The monkeys do. You need the manager or techies and they only serve at the counter.
It could be one of its library's. XMMS source code doesn't give you the player (or at least not one that will do anything) if you used gentoo or LFS you would know this.
Oh and bugs != programming errors or design flaws. Even if you elimenate all the bugs you could still have a program that blows up your cat when you try to save a file. It will just do it without any bugs getting in the way. Wich is a good thing. Unless your the cat.
Ehm, baseballs and footballs are hard to find? If football is indeed the american soccer I am willing to bet a shit load of cash that more families own a football then a ping pong table. You need a bit more equipment for baseball but still. I wasn't exactly aware that amateurs playing baseball was rare.
It is, in fact, one of the very few "indoor" sports that has a video game patterned after it. (Poker's about the only other one that springs to mind.)
Well, if you consider poker a sport then how about the video game versions of the following. Chess, EVERY bloody card game every invented, checkers, darts, bowling, snooker, etc etc etc.
In fact isn't basketball often played indoors by pros AND done to dead as a videogame?
The only unusual thing here is that a 'big' name company did a weird sports title. Weird sports titles on the other hand are nothing new.
I just hate journalists who think ignorance is a good thing.
Then at level 20 you are supposed to get you final class. Except it is prediced. The only difference that the titel is now based on your alignment. Monk (good) Brawler (bad) unarmed fighter.
So how closed is this? Well, at no point do you choose say something like your stat points. Meaning every half-elf brawler level 18 is EXACTLY the same. Because of the way equipment works you will probably also be using pretty much the stuff.
Now they added some minor choices that make you character slightly unique but in EQ2 you pretty much now exactly what a well played shaman is and isn't capable off. Player X will have the same spell list as player Y.
SWG on the other hand left it totally open how you developed your skills. In fact with a new character most players would dabble in ALL the disciplines, being a medic, ranger and melee combat, a dancer and a crafter with a bit of scout for good measure.
Depending on your style and if you weren't a template stacker you could have some unusual mixed. A medic with a sniper rifle , a doctor jedi. Whatever!
To an extent, it allowed a great deal of freedom. Crafters with a sideline in rifles so they could safely clear their harvesters of nasty critters. Dancers with a sideline in cutting peoples heads off.
In SWG you never knew exactly what the other guy was capable off.
SWG is GTA
EQ2 is Need for Speed.
One is freedom, the other is on rails.
Anyway, you make a rather stupid mistake, you think that the people who decry sony are the same who defend blizzard. No way.
Blizzard if anything is a far worse company. It especially screws european players. No beta, No trial, No alternative payment options, Limited to european servers.
But they got one thing right, they 'finished' the game and so far seem to have refrained from just altering the game play completly and telling you to suck it up and like it.
Sony's faults with SWG are simple. They never really decided WHAT the game was going to be like, they didn't debug it, bugs stayed with the game for far to long, even simple bugs that could have been fixed in a second. There customer support is a joke (at least with WoW people get feedback about the que. SWG servers just are down with no message. EQ2 servers are always reported as up even if no one can log in.
The bugs could have been easily fixed? Well yeah, one bug that was in the game for years was as follows. Vehicles took damage as you used them, insanely fast, and the cost for repairing them was an important money drain. Okay so far if crap design (shouts out, your playing a game) but the bug was that after you repaired your vehice and stored it when you recalled it was as damaged as before. Not only wasting your repair costs but also forcing you just to buy new vehicles if the repair didn't stick before the vehicle was destroyed.
How could it have been fixed? Simple. TURN OF DAMAGE! But the money drain? Even simpler. Road tax. Simple tax every player for the vehicles he has. Realistic, your landspeeder doesn't fall apart after one journey and you can even make planets more expensive by having them charge a higher tax.
That SOE couldn't wouldn't fix this tells you all you need to know about them.
People who played the game still care about it. It took up a large amount of time and in some way I know the planets better then the town I live in. It was our hobby and SOE butchered it.
Why? Well at least with the holo grind people were doing different things while grinding. The holo monkeys gave the rest of the galaxy a constant supply of fresh meat. People needing newbie weapons, needing groups to survive doing from melee to ranged.
Or did the rot set in earlier when they added the doc buffs that allowed the solo group to become the only way to play?
If SOE is going to continue, they just need to start over. Ditch this, and just start over with a new design and really choose what kind of MMO they want it to be.
The original SWG was perhaps the oddest of all MMORPG's as in that it didn't have 'levels'. You had a max number of skill points but how you spend those was up to you. It was when players started to optomize them and become super leet fighters and demanding equipment and enemies to satisfy them that the game went to hell.
At the moment the entire CU and NGE mess is caused in no small degree by the fact that the engine just isn't designed for it. It now reminds me of those quake mods that turned a fps into a flightsim or driving game. Fun for a second but they just ain't up to the task.
Why do you think people with a clue are so against the super big media cooperations owning ALL the media? So what if your an independent reporter trying to get the truth out. No need to kill him off, just make sure nobody distributes his story.
The internet was the great revolution in that respect. Virtually anyone can get his/her story out with the big media having no control over it. Trust corrupt/insane goverments to try to ruin it. Oh and trust us to vote them into power time and time again.
While I don't doubt there are a lot of you world wide it is not a market a vodaphone could give a shit about.
Everything you say is confirming that the Japanese do not have the same tastes as westerners. You are a perfect vodaphone customer, the japanese are not.
Vodafone forgot to adapt and are now bowing out to save further problems while they can still recoop their money. It is nothing new. Other western attempts in forms of partnerships have also failed. Japan != the west and the west != Japan. Just look at the success by KPN (dutch telecom who partned with docomo(?)) in bringing iMode to Holland.
It ain't exactly running wild because they totally screwed it up. The west is used to the freedom of the real internet so KNP answered by giving it the limited iMode and then barely filling it with anything worthwhile. People try it, find nothing they like/want/need and then never use it again.
Doing business internationally is very hard. Frankly I am not suprised that western telecoms have a hard time in japan. Japan seems to be a bit of a go getter in mobile communications while the european telecoms tend to be dinosaurs who think a 10 year planning phase is moving dangerously fast.
Keeping the prices high? Are you kidding? If you think 0.99 per song is high you ain't seen nothing yet baby. As soon as we can get people to stop using iTunes and a MS based system instead with no Steve Jobs to protect consumers, and his bottomline, we will really be ramping up the price!
You can't buy opensource. Once it is out there, it is out there. If it is true opensource the code doesn't even belong to a single entity that can be bought. If you contribute some code no matter how small to a opensource project even though you do it under the GPL it still belongs to you. In fact that is what the GPL is pretty much about. You just give everyone else the right to use it (within certain limits) as they wish.
Yes you can hire the developers away from a project in the hope of killing it but why would this be a worry to opensource alone? EVERY project, commercial, political, social can be killed by its enemies by luring the people involved away. It can be very upsetting, just ask Ballmer.
It is nothing new. In fact several opensource people even started working for the beast. The gentoo guy for one. Except he left again pretty quickly.
And that I think is the reason opensource in fact has less to worry about then commercial projects about being bled of its developers. It is a huge difference to work on your own time for a volunteer project and to have to work for your salery on markettings whims.
Most of the bigger opensource projects are done for free by people who wouldn't have any trouble at all doing the same thing for money. In fact most do. There is one thing business week doesn't get about developers. They love it!
A developer will happily work all week coding to support himself to code in weekend as well. People like that can be tempted with money but not for long. When someone is willing to work for free they obviously think that a salery is only there to pay the bills.
But of course, it makes a nice headline because a handfull of companies with opensource projects are being attempted to be bought up (mysql refused didn't it?). Opensource is about as death as socialism. Just check you paycheck how much of your salery goes to social security.
But since this is nothing new and Dell continues to sell it also means that either this does't happen to a lot of people or people just don't learn.
I buy from local shops and NEVER call in with a problem. I put the defective product on the counter on a shopping day (thursday evening or a saturday) and speak loudly about how I want it repaired or replaced. Works wonders. Over a phone they can and will try to tell you that a brand new HD is supposes to show badblocks or that a single wrong pixel in a lcd is acceptable. It is offcourse. If your stupid.
I don't know but so far AI seems to be 'okay' at dodging in a well designed enviroment but coming close to intelligence?
Silent Storm has the AI picking up dropped weapons. Great, so your civilian decides to be a hero, runs out to some dropped weapon, picks a lot of crap up and then gets killed before his next turn.
There are other games too where giving the AI freedom just never pans out. The only game where I seen some 'real' AI behaviour that seemed human was in the original Alien vs Predator. I was an alien hanging from the ceiling and two AI are in a hallway further along, one of them panicks and fires in my general direction and misses killing the other and he panics before being killed by the backblast.
That was not intelligent but it was human like (he missed because the angle was wrong not because he stupidly shot his buddy or the scenery). But then I realised that it wasn't very good AI at all.
The AI enemies would routinely throw explosives at me with no hope of reaching me that would then come back down and kill their own troops. Basically what seemed human ai was just bad projectile path prediction (or as Silent Storm players call it, don't fire your machine gun through your own squad you idiot AI).
I would love to see some decent AI, I really would and maybe this game has it (doubt it since Morrowind didn't have ANY) but some developers wild story doesn't make me hopefull. I could tell you plenty of wild AI stories in game sessions that in the end were just lucky coincedence. Yeah they are great when they happen to you but they are not AI anymore then when the ghosts in pacman happen to completly surround you just as the pill runs out is real AI. Just random luck.
They are totally different beasts. If you like one then you will probably hate the other. To me for instance Final Fantasy isn't even an RPG. Its an adventure on rails with piss poor graphics and lousy combat and ZERO freedom.
On the other hand if you loved it then Morrowind will definitly not be your cup of tea. FF very strong story line with NO choice wich allows for your character to have a very real personilty and interact with his surroundings.
Morrowind, you are pretty much a faceless hero, if your lucky the AI will be intelligent enough to react differently depending on your sex but expecting it to react based on your sex, and skin color and species and combat choice is to much for current tech. Then again, morrowing allows you to play YOUR character and not the character the FF designer decided.
As for the loading times, well it all depends, on a good PC it sufffered because it was crippled (was fixed later with the PC only expansions) to be able to run on a x-box and therefor did not make full use of your memory. But again comparing this to FF7 is insane. Maybe your monitor sucked or you played the games on a console but on the PC the graphics difference between FF7 and Morrowind is several lightyears.
Anyway, for anyone still reading, ALL the Elder Scroll games are open ended, be your own character style games. If you expect Japanese style on rail gameplay look elsewhere. Elder Scrolls makes Baldur Gates look restrictive.
Sadly reviewers have to put games in one of a handfull of categories and that makes it very confusing for people who think all RPG's should be alike.
I am not suprised you didn't like morrowind, what is sad that you didn't learn it would not be to your taste before you bought it. Game reviews suck for this reason alone. Stop trying to sell every game to everybody. Make it clear what a game is going to be like.
This gamespot 'preview' again seems to be selling the game as having action and plot and it won't. You will once again be allowed to get totally lost and have to deal witht the fact you can wander into the wrong areas way to early because that is the kind of game Bethseda makes. Some of use love it, but make it clear to the Final Fantasy lovers that they should stay clear. Or at least be prepared for something completly different.
If you think Sony is having troubles take a look at Philips. They been struggling for the last 2 decades and they are still around.
Big companies don't die easily and they don't get much bigger then Sony. Even now.
Oh sure, Sony can really get into trouble but it is to big to just collapse unless a scandal happens like Enron. For one thing there is employment. Sony has factories everywhere and goverments are very reluctant to just let them close. So for at least a few years ways will be found to keep them open. It happened with companies that were in far worse trouble then Sony is.
Frankly most of this talk is rather silly. There is the ever present fantasy of seeing the giant cut down to size. Very human but just not likely. There is even a post in this news story that Sony should really worry about MS x-box. The eternal fantasy that the giant Playstation will be brought down by the humble MS (irony or what) in the form of the x-box. Because the x-box 360 has all these features. That the original x-box also had and that didn't work but that is just details. It is the upstart vs the giant and the giant must loose or how can the world survive.
Then there is the idea that Apple can compete with Sony in the living room. Because Apple has an mp3 player while Sony only has every other device you can have in your house. Apple to provide a DVR. Nice, and what will you watch it on?
A problem I can't judge for its realness is wether Sony Hardware is really being cripled by Sony Media. Yes there are suggestions that Philips (who sold its media division) is far more ready to provide consumers with electronics that can be used to excersise their rights to make personal copies while Sony devices seem to take DRM to the next level. But is this really because of the media division or is it just someone in hardware who doesn't have a clue.
Oh and lets not forget that the other 'players' MS and Apple are both very happy DRM sellers as well. Hell Steve Jobs has disney so he should be feeling the same pressure from his media half as sony feels from its.
Remember Sony once fought in court for the right to copy. Disney has always been anti-consumer rights.
Now if there is a problem with Sony I think it is far simpler. They seem to be dropping in quality. Sony just to be just good for not an insane amount of money. They weren't the best and they weren't cheap but if you bought something off them you could be reasonably sure that it would last for a while. My minidisc player lasted me for four years. All my old Sony stuff lasted a long time under heavy abuse while cheaper brands would break in under a year.
If you could afford Sony it was an okay deal and that is actually worth a lot in real life.
Just recently my only Sony products are the PSP with its famous dead pixels and the Sony earbuds. Now they used to be very expensive (50 euros) but they fit perfectly in my ear and allow me to keep the sound level down by reducing outside noise. They lasted about a year of daily use before falling apart.
Recently something seems to have gone wrong with the plastic around the wires. It melts or something becoming almost chewing gum like and falls off the wires. Just after a month 2-3. Once I thought it was my fault, but when it happened a second time with a new set for no reason (not left out in heat or something) I am starting to think something is wrong the material itself.
If Sony has lost or is going to lose its image for decent quality for a decent price then it is in serious shit. As long as it could sell me earbuds for 50 euros when everyone else manages to sell them for half then it is doing fine and can afford a few 'flops'. Personally I am now looking to buy some 'pro' earbuds with real earplugs. More expensive but hopefully they give better sound isolation and last longer.
The upcoming PS3 (whenever it may actually launch) will I think be an imp
Then again it says a lot about skype that they even put in a hard limit in their software. Since hardware is improving all the time this will make your software quickly fall behind. It is like those software installers that check the platform string and refuse to install if it doesn't match their list. So you have to hack the game to work install on w2k3 (MS greatest gaming platform ever, would want it in a server room but runs games perfectly).
Even if intel launches some 6hgz chip skype would still be limited to 10 callers. Even if you run it on a super computer, skype would still be limited by 10 callers.
Oh well, pretty much everyone here on slashdot predicted this would end up in court.
Limiting your online product to a segment of the market. Oh yeah, the bubble is back with a vengenance. Does their website insist you run IE as well?
It is a bit like a schoolplay where the script comes with extra scenes and characters to fit the class size just so that every kid can have a part and not feel left out.
This one hero who can change the world idea of WoW is going to go as well as me playing quake in the ISP's server room. God the abuse I got just for having a ping less then zero. Same for the poor sap who is the one who rings the bell while everyone is still waiting in a que.
It works for single player games but not in the massive games. People ain't that nice that they feel happy someone else got to do the cool bit.
More or less the game was just fun to play. The sequel was sorta fun as well except it somehow never had the magic moments of the first and was a lot harder. Then came the console save points. Remember game designers, save points are a hardware limitation, NOT good game design.
ME the PAYING customer want to play your game in the way I the PAYING customer wants to play it. That includes sessions of a few minutes between other activities. NOT having to play for as long as some level designer decided I need to play to get between save points.
The game lost the magic, became too hard while not keeping up with PC developments. Somebody needs to shoot the people that worked on the sequels and get the original magic back. A simple fun platform game where you usually just make the jump, the run, the leap with some impressive architecture to stare at. I am talkling about the SCENERY! You pervert. Geez.
As for Lara getting more 'realistic'. WHAT THE FUCK!
So what is some people with to much estrogen complain. Sell the game to the real men that want their women to have impossible looks. They are impossible to live with anyway, they might as well look it too. I just remember Planescape torment, now that was a game with big boobies.