Anyone that can say with a straight face that France "stood on principle" is a comedic genius.
(Hint to the deluded: France has been violating UN sanctions for years, in selling to the Iraqis. So only the US should abide by the UN? Get real, lamer.)
Nintendo is stubborn occasionally to the point of outright stupidity (read: N64 cartridge format, continued anti-online gaming nonsense), but this will be available to people one way or another.
Not long after Wind Waker's release, tons of the preorder bonus disc were available "used" at game stores like EB (though most of the copies were untouched). I'm sure plenty of people just wanted Wind Waker, and saw selling the unwanted bonus disc back as collecting free money (or free store credit, more likely).
Likewise, plenty of holiday GC purchases will be by people uninterested in "that crappy old games disc". If the used bins aren't polluted with a bunch of copies before Christmas, they certainly will be after.
Still, hopefully there will be more direct ways of getting a copy, similar to the Wind Waker ones you cited.
(BTW, Super NES through S-Video is awesome. Enjoy.)
Here in the US, Microsoft was targeted for using their position in one area (operating systems) to try and force another of their products (Internet Explorer) on consumers.
In Israel, it's about using their position in one area (office software) to try and force another of their products (Windows) on consumers.
The only difference is how they're doing it. With IE, it was a matter of forcing you to have software and not letting you get rid of it without damaging a completely unrelated other piece of software - the OS.
With Office on the Mac, they're denying a key service - language support - to try and force you to use the product on THEIR operating system.
In a world where MS doesn't control everything, the makers of the office software wouldn't be the makers of an OS, and would have no duty but to serve their cusomers. Instead, we have MS crippling an important piece of software (where all other competition has been driven out) to try and force customers to use the software on their OS.
Protecting a company's ideas should not include forcing employees to spend a year in purgatory when they decide to leave. Ex-employees should not be judged and punished for what they might do. Especially in an industry that is built on employees changing companies regularly. Vertical movement in the game industry is often achieved by moving to greener pastures.
As someone headed to the game industry after college/grad school, I will definitely be on the lookout for bull like this in contracts. An NDA is one thing, but this is ridiculous.
Agreed. While Grim Fandango's 3D look was GREAT, Monkey Island suffered because it was trying to make 3D characters look like their 2D counterparts, and that doesn't tend to pan out too well.
Curse of Monkey Island looked GREAT. The best the series ever looked. Go back to that, LucasArts.
.... even if the problems of legality, practicality, AND user willigness to go the "pay" route are all conquered:
I will not pay for flawed downloads.
Do you know how many fucked-up songs I've downloaded from KaZaA? (If you use KaZaA, you know). From mislabeled songs to incomplete songs to the real kicker: songs with ripping/encoding errors.
Imagine the outcry and attempts at support calls/emails that will follow. Of course, this could be eliminated by hosting good rips on a central server, but that's exactly what they DON'T want to do. So how do you manage the vast sea of no-quality-control? Track down the users hosting bad files and notify them, using the back side of a shovel? (something I've always wanted to do.... "hey fucknut, didja notice that the track goes "bloop-bloop-bleep" throughout the whole intro, and the song ends in the middle of a chorus? *THWACK!!*). Maybe even locate the ripper/encoder of the bad track(s) and expose him/her to radioactive materials?
Actually, this might be a good way to raise the per capita intelligence level of the general populace...
The problem with minimum wage hikes is that it rapes small, local business.
People in their ivory towers of idealism do not recognize that there are millions of businesses that are NOT big brutes like a Microsoft or an IBM or any other big corporation. Many of these businesses operate on razor-thin profit margins. The idealists don't get that. Business is just built up in their mind as this monolithic entity that has all the money. Many businesses are far from that.
I've known small businessmen that have been forced to hike their prices because minimum wage hikes would quite simply force them into the red - and eventually out of business. And then those college kids are out of work, and must wait for another pizza place to come in and take that building and offer those jobs again.
IBM and Microsoft don't hire minimum wage workers. Hiking the minimum wage hurts the businesses that employ them. It's one thing to make minor adjustments every few years to keep minimum wage from becoming too low. However, the so-called "politicians for the people" hike minimum wage beyond that, like they're champions for the common man. They champion them right out of a job.
>> Countries will retaliate with their own tariffs
Many of these countries already have the high tariffs of their own, and that is part of the problem.
Free trade doesn't mean "get taken advantage of". If they're gonna tariff your goods and try to balance things so that you buy from them but can't sell to them, then the way I see it, you're free to counter such things.
>> Now that Nintendo has virtually established themselves as the 2nd Console of choice, Microsoft just lost that entire market..again.
Nintendo's going to need quite a few more big weeks like this before they surpass the Xbox in the US.
And when Halo 2 releases - online play and all - the GameCube is in for a rude awakening. (And I don't say that as a Halo fan, because I am not. But both the Xbox and Xbox Live are going to surge on the strength of that, just as games like SOCOM II and Gran Turismo 4 will sell network adapters to any PS2 owners that don't have them, and help revitalize that platform). Nintendo is enjoying a surge in what is otherwise a dead time. It's like giving your all on a leg of the Tour de France where all of the other riders are just pacing themselves. You may win that leg, but you're in for a big shock when the other riders get serious again.
That which is new and compelling generally begins on the "avant-garde", and appeals only to the fringe.
Eventually, that which is "avant-garde" becomes an accepted part of the mainstream art.
Gaming is kind of a peculiar situation, as it changes SO rapidly in such a small span of time, due to technological advances. A lay person might see art from a span of 2 centuries as being obviously related, but might look at Pong compared to GTA: Vice City and see them as in no way related (except for being "images onscreen that you can manipulate - which, in art terms, would be reducing the relationship to "paint applied to flat surface").
That which changed in centuries in eras gone past, and decades in more recent eras, now changes in mere years.
There are TWO issues here - people treating games as art, and game developers treating games as art. If the latter does not happen, then there's no reason to expect the former to. In today's industry, I would argue that the latter happens "sometimes".
Still, it's a trend. Both those that make the games and those that play them will gradually begin to see gaming as less of a diversion, and more of a substantial vehicle for something meaningful. These two will coexist, as they do in motion picture cinema (although, hopefully, gaming will fare even better than Hollywood).
Slashdot Mirror
(Hint to the deluded: France has been violating UN sanctions for years, in selling to the Iraqis. So only the US should abide by the UN? Get real, lamer.)
Not long after Wind Waker's release, tons of the preorder bonus disc were available "used" at game stores like EB (though most of the copies were untouched). I'm sure plenty of people just wanted Wind Waker, and saw selling the unwanted bonus disc back as collecting free money (or free store credit, more likely).
Likewise, plenty of holiday GC purchases will be by people uninterested in "that crappy old games disc". If the used bins aren't polluted with a bunch of copies before Christmas, they certainly will be after.
Still, hopefully there will be more direct ways of getting a copy, similar to the Wind Waker ones you cited.
(BTW, Super NES through S-Video is awesome. Enjoy.)
In Israel, it's about using their position in one area (office software) to try and force another of their products (Windows) on consumers.
The only difference is how they're doing it. With IE, it was a matter of forcing you to have software and not letting you get rid of it without damaging a completely unrelated other piece of software - the OS.
With Office on the Mac, they're denying a key service - language support - to try and force you to use the product on THEIR operating system.
In a world where MS doesn't control everything, the makers of the office software wouldn't be the makers of an OS, and would have no duty but to serve their cusomers. Instead, we have MS crippling an important piece of software (where all other competition has been driven out) to try and force customers to use the software on their OS.
Read it again.
As someone headed to the game industry after college/grad school, I will definitely be on the lookout for bull like this in contracts. An NDA is one thing, but this is ridiculous.
But I'm impressed with how far it has come. I wish for increased performance and an OS X native build.
So, all those poor Japanese that hated the size of the Xbox... where are they gonna find the space for the larger-than-an-Xbox PSX?
Curse of Monkey Island looked GREAT. The best the series ever looked. Go back to that, LucasArts.
I will not pay for flawed downloads.
Do you know how many fucked-up songs I've downloaded from KaZaA? (If you use KaZaA, you know). From mislabeled songs to incomplete songs to the real kicker: songs with ripping/encoding errors.
Imagine the outcry and attempts at support calls/emails that will follow. Of course, this could be eliminated by hosting good rips on a central server, but that's exactly what they DON'T want to do. So how do you manage the vast sea of no-quality-control? Track down the users hosting bad files and notify them, using the back side of a shovel? (something I've always wanted to do.... "hey fucknut, didja notice that the track goes "bloop-bloop-bleep" throughout the whole intro, and the song ends in the middle of a chorus? *THWACK!!*). Maybe even locate the ripper/encoder of the bad track(s) and expose him/her to radioactive materials?
Actually, this might be a good way to raise the per capita intelligence level of the general populace...
People in their ivory towers of idealism do not recognize that there are millions of businesses that are NOT big brutes like a Microsoft or an IBM or any other big corporation. Many of these businesses operate on razor-thin profit margins. The idealists don't get that. Business is just built up in their mind as this monolithic entity that has all the money. Many businesses are far from that.
I've known small businessmen that have been forced to hike their prices because minimum wage hikes would quite simply force them into the red - and eventually out of business. And then those college kids are out of work, and must wait for another pizza place to come in and take that building and offer those jobs again.
IBM and Microsoft don't hire minimum wage workers. Hiking the minimum wage hurts the businesses that employ them. It's one thing to make minor adjustments every few years to keep minimum wage from becoming too low. However, the so-called "politicians for the people" hike minimum wage beyond that, like they're champions for the common man. They champion them right out of a job.
Many of these countries already have the high tariffs of their own, and that is part of the problem.
Free trade doesn't mean "get taken advantage of". If they're gonna tariff your goods and try to balance things so that you buy from them but can't sell to them, then the way I see it, you're free to counter such things.
Where exactly is the money going to come from?
Are you one of those people that gets surprised that the cost of goods goes up and college kids get laid off when the minimum wage gets hiked up?
Does the GC have an Ethernet port? No.
Has you ever seen a GC Ethernet adapter in a store? I never have.
Nintendo's going to need quite a few more big weeks like this before they surpass the Xbox in the US.
And when Halo 2 releases - online play and all - the GameCube is in for a rude awakening. (And I don't say that as a Halo fan, because I am not. But both the Xbox and Xbox Live are going to surge on the strength of that, just as games like SOCOM II and Gran Turismo 4 will sell network adapters to any PS2 owners that don't have them, and help revitalize that platform). Nintendo is enjoying a surge in what is otherwise a dead time. It's like giving your all on a leg of the Tour de France where all of the other riders are just pacing themselves. You may win that leg, but you're in for a big shock when the other riders get serious again.
Linux has FAR more to gain by being added to a chunk of that percentage than Windows does by being added to the much smaller chunk that doesn't.
Well now, they'll have an excuse for suppressing the word-of-mouth spread of bad reviews!
"If you hated the movie, you MUST have watched a fucked-up bootleg copy! Pirate!"
To quote Jules Winnfield: "English, motherfucker!"
Why does correct English elude them so?
*head explodes*
"looses"? Even in the right tense, it would be wrong. Why does the word "lose" baffle so many?
That which is new and compelling generally begins on the "avant-garde", and appeals only to the fringe.
Eventually, that which is "avant-garde" becomes an accepted part of the mainstream art.
Gaming is kind of a peculiar situation, as it changes SO rapidly in such a small span of time, due to technological advances. A lay person might see art from a span of 2 centuries as being obviously related, but might look at Pong compared to GTA: Vice City and see them as in no way related (except for being "images onscreen that you can manipulate - which, in art terms, would be reducing the relationship to "paint applied to flat surface").
That which changed in centuries in eras gone past, and decades in more recent eras, now changes in mere years.
There are TWO issues here - people treating games as art, and game developers treating games as art. If the latter does not happen, then there's no reason to expect the former to. In today's industry, I would argue that the latter happens "sometimes".
Still, it's a trend. Both those that make the games and those that play them will gradually begin to see gaming as less of a diversion, and more of a substantial vehicle for something meaningful. These two will coexist, as they do in motion picture cinema (although, hopefully, gaming will fare even better than Hollywood).